>>5877574A lot of the things he doesn't so traditionally are because no japanese carvers or printers would teach him so he just said "fine, ill do it myself" and used notes from watching carvers and printers work to teach himself. For example he carves with his left hand and holds the tool like a scalpel. Japanese carvers all hold the tool with their right hand regardless of what hand you write with and they hold the knife in an ice pick grip.
The quality of the carving itself is not near the golden age of japanese woodblock prints and he says so himself it is nowhere near some of the prints he has from that era. But there are basically no carvers or printers left because there is no work for them and especially no work for new apprentices to learn.
He essentially came along to a dead art that was impossible to learn or make money with and did both. Then he hired the same people that called him a hobbyist and naive and gave them work they desperately needed. Some of the older carvers and printers would ignore his instructions and just do it how the learned to do it so he let them go. The ones that actually listened to him are still getting work today while everyone else "retired".
He is definitely not doing everything traditional or "correct" and that's one of the reasons I think his business won't get far without him when he dies. He needs more foreigners working for him that can ignore the japanese thinking of "do it traditionally, do it japanese or don't do it all".
One of his outsourced printers won't put his name on the work because he doesn't want his name on foreigner prints, but he will happily take the money for the job. So David Bull puts the printers name on every print after it gets to him. There's also a japanese wife printer and husband carver working for him who just take the piss and do whatever they want because they think they know better since they are japanese and dave is a silly foreigner, and hes too nice to fire a couple with kids.
