Woodblock printing
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224125526
2008-07-07T12:43:41Z
Johnbod
2563820
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[[Image:Yuan dynasty woodblock.jpg|thumb|270px|[[Yuan Dynasty]] woodblock edition of a [[China|Chinese]] play]]
:''For the use of the technique in art, see [[Woodcut]] on the technique, and [[Old master print]] for the history in Europe and [[woodblock printing in Japan]].''
'''Woodblock printing''' is a technique for [[printing]] text, images or patterns used widely throughout [[East Asia]] and originating in [[China]] in antiquity as a method of printing on [[textile]]s and later [[paper]]. As a [[Woodblock printing on textiles|method of printing on cloth]], the earliest surviving examples from [[China]] date to before 220, and from [[Egypt]] to the 4th century.<ref>[http://touregypt.net/featurestories/fabrics.htm Ancient Coptic Christian Fabrics from Egypt<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> ''[[Ukiyo-e]]'' is the best known type of [[Japan]]ese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the art term [[woodcut]], except for the [[woodblock printing#Block-books in fifteenth century Europe|block-books]] produced mainly in the fifteenth century.
==Technique==
The wood block is prepared as a [[relief print|relief]] matrix, which means the areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife or chisel, leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface level. The block was cut along the grain of the wood. It is only necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. The content would of course print "in reverse" or mirror-image, a further complication when text was involved. The art of carving the woodcut is technically known as ''[[xylography]]'', though the term is rarely used in English.
For colour printing, multiple blocks are used, each for one colour, although overprinting two colours may produce further colours on the print. Multiple colours can be printed by keying the paper to a frame around the woodblocks.
[[Image:Woodblock printing, Sera, Tibet.JPG|thumb|270px|Young monks printing Buddhist scriptures using the rubbing technique, [[Sera Monastery]], [[Tibet]]]]
There are three methods of printing to consider:
;Stamping: Used for many fabrics, and most early European woodcuts (1400-40) These were printed by putting the paper or fabric on a table or other flat surface with the block on top, and pressing or hammering the back of the block.
;Rubbing: Apparently the most common for Far Eastern printing on paper at all times. Used for European woodcuts and block-books later in the fifteenth century, and very widely for cloth. The block goes face up on a table, with the paper or fabric on top. The back is rubbed with a "hard pad, a flat piece of wood, a burnisher, or a leather frotton".<ref name="Hind">An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, Arthur M. Hind,p64-94, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1935 (in USA), reprinted Dover Publications, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20952-0</ref>
;Printing in a press: Presses only seem to have been used in Asia in relatively recent times. Simple weighted presses may have been used in Europe, but firm evidence is lacking. Later, printing-presses were used (from about 1480). A deceased Abbess of [[Mechelen]] in [[Flanders]] in 1465 had "unum instrumentum ad imprintendum scripturas et ymagines … cum 14 aliis lapideis printis" ("an instrument for printing texts and pictures … with 14 stones for printing") which is probably too early to be a [[Johannes Gutenberg|Gutenberg]]-type printing press in that location.<ref name="Hind"/> <!--with "stones, this seems like it would be an example of pressing with weights, not a printing press with any sort of lever or screw action ~~~~ -->
In addition, ''jia xie'' is a method for dyeing textiles (usually silk) using wood blocks invented in the 5th-6th centuries in China. An upper and a lower block is made, with carved out compartments opening to the back, fitted with plugs. The cloth, usually folded a number of times, is inserted and clamped between the two blocks. By unplugging the different compartments and filling them with dyes of different colours, a multi-coloured pattern can be printed over quite a large area of folded cloth. The method is not strictly printing however, as the pattern is not caused by pressure against the block.<ref name="cave">Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas" , 1990, British Museum publications, ISBN 0-7141-1447-2</ref>
==Development of Block Printing ==
[[Image:WoodcutBuddaChina.jpg|thumb|left|Coloured woodcut Buddha, 10th century, China]]
The use of round "cylinder seals" for rolling an impress onto clay tablets goes back to early [[Mesopotamia]]n civilization before 3,000 BCE, where they are the commonest works of art to survive, and feature complex and beautiful images. In both China and Egypt, the use of small stamps for seals preceded the use of larger blocks. In Egypt, Europe, and India, the printing of cloth certainly preceded the printing of paper or papyrus; this was probably also the case in China. The process is essentially the same—in Europe special presentation impressions of [[old master print|prints]] were often printed on [[silk]] until at least the seventeenth century.
The earliest woodblock printed fragments to survive are from China and are of silk printed with flowers in three colours from the [[Han dynasty]] (before 220 CE).<ref name="cave"/> The earliest Egyptian printed cloth dates from the 4th century.<ref>[http://touregypt.net/featurestories/fabrics.htm Ancient Coptic Christian Fabrics from Egypt<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> but the dry conditions in Egypt are exceptionally good for preserving fabric compared to, for example, India.
It is clear that woodblock printing developed in Asia several centuries before Europe. The Chinese and Koreans were the first to use the process to print solid text, and equally that, much later, in Europe the printing of images on cloth developed into the printing of images on paper ([[woodcut]]s). It is also now established that the use in Europe of the same process to print substantial amounts of text together with images in block-books only came after the development of [[movable type]] in the 1450s.
It is not clear if the [[Egypt]]ian printing of cloth was learned from China, or elsewhere, or developed separately. A unique type of block printing (''tarsh'' in [[Arabic language|Arabic]]) was developed in [[History of Arab Egypt|Islamic Egypt]] during the 9th-10th centuries: print blocks made from [[metal]]s such as [[tin]], [[lead]] and [[cast iron]], as well as [[Rock (geology)|stone]], [[glass]] and [[clay]]. The first printed [[amulet]]s were also developed there, and were printed with [[Arabic calligraphy]] using metal block printing. This technique, however, appears to have had very little influence outside of the [[Muslim world]], since metal and other non-wooden forms of block printing were unknown in China, which later developed metal [[movable type]] printing instead. Though Europe adopted woodblock printing from the Muslim world, the technique of metal block printing was also unknown in Europe. Block printing later went out of use in Islamic [[Central Asia]] after movable type printing was introduced from China.<ref>Richard W. Bulliet (1987), "Medieval Arabic Tarsh: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Printing", ''Journal of the American Oriental Society'' '''107''' (3), p. 427-438.</ref>
In China, an alternative to woodblock printing was a system of [[reprography]] since the Han Dynasty using carved stone [[stele]]s to reproduce pages of text.<ref>Berner, R. Thomas. "The Ancient Chinese Process of Reprography," ''Technology and Culture'' (Volume 38, Number 2, 1997): 424–431.</ref>
In India the main importance of the technique has always been as a method of printing textiles, which has been a large industry for centuries. Large quantities of printed Indian [[silk]] and [[cotton]] were exported to Europe throughout the [[Modern Period]].
The three necessary components for woodblock printing are the wood block, which carries the design cut in [[relief]]; dye or [[ink]], which had been widely used in the ancient world; and either [[cloth]] or [[paper]], which was first developed in China, around the [[3rd century BC|3rd]] or 2nd century BC. Woodblock printing on [[papyrus]] seems never to have been practised, although it would be possible.
Because [[Chinese written language|Chinese]] has a [[character set]] running into the thousands, woodblock printing suits it better than [[movable type]] to the extent that characters only need to be created as they occur in the text. Although the Chinese had invented a form of [[movable type]] with baked clay in the 11th century, and metal movable type was introduced in Korea in the 13th century, woodblocks continued to be preferred owing to the formidable challenges of typesetting Chinese text with its 40,000 or more characters. Also, the objective of printing in the East may have been more focused on standardization of ritual text (such as the Buddhist canon [[Tripitaka]], requiring 130,000 woodblocks), and the purity of validated woodblocks could be maintained for centuries.<ref name=christensen>
{{cite web
|url=http://www.rightreading.com/printing/gutenberg.asia/gutenberg-asia-1-introduction.htm
|title=Did East Asian Printing Traditions Influence the European Renaissance?
|author=Thomas Christensen
|accessdate=2006-10-18
|date= 2007
|publisher = Arts of Asia Magazine (to appear)
}}</ref>
When there was a need for the reproduction of a text, the original block could simply be brought out again, while moveable type necessitated error-prone composition of distinct "editions".
In China, [[Korea]], and [[Japan]], the state involved itself in printing at a relatively early stage; initially only the government had the resources to finance the carving of the blocks for long works.
The difference between East Asian woodblock printing and the Western [[printing press]] had major implications for the development of book culture and book markets in East Asia and Europe.
==Early Books==
[[Image:Jingangjing.jpg|thumb|300px|right|The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from [[Tang Dynasty]] China, the world's earliest dated printed book, AD 868 ([[British Museum]])]]
Woodblock printing in China is strongly associated with [[Buddhism]], which encouraged the spread of charms and sutras. In the Tang Dynasty, a [[Chinese people|Chinese]] writer named Fenzhi first mentioned in his book "Yuan Xian San Ji" that the woodblock was used to print Buddhist scriptures during the Zhenguan years (627~649 AD). The oldest known [[China|Chinese]] surviving printed work is a woodblock-printed Buddhist scripture of [[Wu Zetian]] period (684~705 AD); discovered in [[Turfan]], [[Xinjiang]] province, China in 1906, it is now stored in a calligraphy museum in [[Tokyo]], [[Japan]].
A woodblock print of the [[Dharani sutra]] dated between AD 704 and 751 was found at [[Bulguksa]], [[South Korea]] in 1966. [http://countrystudies.us/north-korea/7.htm] [http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla62/62-yosz.htm] [http://www.rightreading.com/printing/gutenberg.asia/gutenberg-asia-9-korea.htm] [http://eng.buddhapia.com/_Service/_ContentView/ETC_CONTENT_2.ASP?pk=0000594295&sub_pk=&clss_cd=0002187369&top_menu_cd=0000000592&Menu_code=0000008846&sub_menu=] Its [[Buddhist]] text was printed on a [[Paper Mulberry|mulberry]] paper scroll 8 cm wide and 630 cm long in the early Korean Kingdom of [[Unified Silla]].<!-- Perhaps it is the text at http://www.e-sangha.com/alphone/dabei_sutra.htm. Source: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holztafeldruck --> Another version of the Dharani sutra, printed in Japan around 770 AD, is also frequently cited as an example of early printing. One million copies of the sutra, along with other prayers, were ordered to be produced by [[Empress Shōtoku]]. As each copy was then stored in a tiny wooden pagoda, the copies are together known as the ''[[Hyakumantō Darani]]'' (百万塔陀羅尼, "1,000,000 towers/pagodas Darani").
The world's earliest dated (868 AD) printed book is a Chinese scroll about sixteen feet long and containing the text of the [[Diamond Sutra]]. It was found in 1907 by the [[archaeologist]] Sir [[Marc Aurel Stein]] in [[Mogao Caves]] in [[Dunhuang]], and is now in the [[British Museum]]. The book displays a great maturity of design and layout and speaks of a considerable ancestry for woodblock printing. The [[colophon (book)|colophon]], at the inner end, reads: ''Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11th May, CE 868 ]''.
[[Image:Pen ts'ao, woodblock book 1249-ce.png|thumb|240px|right|Finely crafted books—like the ''Bencao'' (''materia medica'') shown here—were produced in China as early as the ninth century.<ref name="meggs24">Meggs, Philip B. ''A History of Graphic Design.'' John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998. (p 24) ISBN 0-471-291-98-6</ref>]]
In late 10th century China the complete Buddhist canon [[Tripitaka]] of 130,000 pages was printed with blocks, which took between 1080 and 1102, and many other very long works were printed. Early books were on [[scroll]]s, but [[Traditional Chinese bookbinding|other book formats]] were developed. First came the ''Jingzhe zhuang'' or "sutra binding", a scroll folded concertina-wise, which avoided the need to unroll half a scroll to see a passage in the middle. About 1,000AD "butterfly binding" was developed; two pages were printed on a sheet, which was then folded inwards. The sheets were then pasted together at the fold to make a [[codex]] with alternate openings of printed and blank pairs of pages. In the fourteenth century the folding was reversed outwards to give continuous printed pages, each backed by a blank hidden page. Later the bindings were sewn rather than pasted. Only relatively small volumes (''juan'') were bound up, and several of these would be enclosed in a cover called a ''tao'', with wooden boards at front and back, and loops and pegs to close up the book when not in use. For example one complete Tripitaka had over 6,400 ''juan'' in 595 ''tao''.[http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/5/5.18/#2540]
==Woodblock printing in Eurasia==
The technique is found through East and Central Asia, and in the [[Byzantine]] world for cloth, and by 1000 AD examples of woodblock printing on paper appear in Islamic [[Egypt]]. Printing onto cloth had spread much earlier, and was common in Europe by 1300. Woodblock printing on paper of images only began in Europe around 1400, almost as soon as paper became available, and the [[old master print|print]] in [[woodcut]], later joined by [[engraving]], quickly became an important cultural tradition for popular religious works, as well as [[playing cards]] and other uses.<ref name="Hind">An Introduction to a History of Woodcut, Arthur M. Hind,p64-94, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1935 (in USA), reprinted Dover Publications, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20952-0</ref>
Many early Chinese examples, such as the Diamond Sutra (above) contain images, mostly Buddhist, that are often elaborate. Later, some notable artists designed woodblock images for books, but the separate artistic print did not develop in China as it did in Europe and Japan. Apart from devotional images, mainly Buddhist, few "single-leaf" Chinese prints were made until the nineteenth century.
==Block-books in fifteenth century Europe==
[[Image:BibliaPauperum.jpg|thumb|Three episodes from a block-book [[Biblia Pauperum]] illustrating [[typology (theology)|typological]] correspondences between the Old and New Testaments: Eve and the serpent, the [[Annunciation]], [[Gideon]]'s miracle]]
Block-books, where both text and images are cut on blocks, appeared in Europe in the 1460s as a cheaper alternative to books printed by [[movable type]].<ref>Master E.S., Alan Shestack, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1967</ref> A [[woodcut]] is an image, perhaps with a title, cut in a single block and used as a book illustration with adjacent text printed using movable type. The only example of the blockbook form that contains no images is the school textbook Latin grammar of [[Aelius Donatus|Donatus]].
The most famous block-books are the [[Speculum Humanae Salvationis]] and the [[Ars moriendi]], though in this the images and text are on different pages, but all block-cut. The [[Biblia pauperum]], a Biblical picture-book, was the next most common title, and the great majority of block-books were popular devotional works. All block-books are fairly short at less than fifty pages. While in Europe movable metal type soon became cheap enough to replace woodblock printing for the reproduction of text, woodcuts remained a major way to reproduce images in illustrated works of early modern European printing. See [[old master print]].
Most block-books before about 1480 were printed on only one side of the paper — if they were printed by rubbing it would be difficult to print on both sides without damaging the first one to be printed. Many were printed with two pages per sheet, producing a book with opening of two printed pages, followed by openings with two blank pages (as earlier in China). The blank pages were then glued together to produce a book looking like a type-printed one. Where both sides of a sheet have been printed, it is presumed a [[printing-press]] was used.
==Colour==
[[Image:Hiroshige A large waterfall.jpg|thumb|right|''Large Waterfall'' by [[Hiroshige]], a [[ukiyo-e]] artist]]
The earliest woodblock printing known is in colour—[[China|Chinese]] [[silk]] from the [[Han Dynasty]] printed in three colours.<ref name="cave">Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas" , 1990, British Museum publications, ISBN 0 7141 1447 2</ref>
On paper, European woodcut prints with coloured blocks were invented in Germany in 1508 and are known as [[Chiaroscuro#Chiaroscuro woodcuts|chiaroscuro woodcuts]].
Colour is very common in Asian woodblock printing on paper; in [[China]] the first known example is a Diamond sutra of 1341, printed in black and red at the Zifu Temple in modern day Hubei province. The earliest dated book printed in more than 2 colours is Chengshi moyuan, a book on ink-cakes printed in 1606 and the technique reached its height in books on art published in the first half of the seventeenth century. Notable examples are the Treatise on the Paintings and Writings of the Ten Bamboo Studio of 1633, and the Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual published in 1679 and 1701.<ref>L Sickman & A Soper, "The Art and Architecture of China", Pelican History of Art, 3rd ed 1971, Penguin, LOC 70-125675</ref>
In [[Japan]], a multi-colour technique, called [[nishiki-e]] ("brocade pictures"), spread more widely, and was used for prints, from the 1760s on. Japanese woodcut became a major artistic form, although at the time it was accorded a much lower status than painting.
In both Europe and Japan, book illustrations were normally printed in black ink only, and colour reserved for individual artistic prints. In China, the reverse was true, and colour printing was used mainly in books on art and erotica.
==Japan==
{{main|Woodblock printing in Japan}}
The earliest known woodblock printing dates from 764-770, when an Empress commissioned one million small wooden [[pagoda]]s containing short printed scrolls (typically 6 x 45 cm) to be distributed to temples.[http://www.nb.no/baser/schoyen/5/5.18/#2489]
Apart from the production of [[Buddhist]] texts, which became widespread from the eleventh century in Japan, the process was only adopted in Japan for secular books surprisingly late, and a [[Chinese language|Chinese]]-[[Japanese language|Japanese]] dictionary of 1590 is the earliest known example.
Though the [[Jesuits]] operated a [[movable type]] [[printing-press]] in [[Nagasaki, Nagasaki|Nagasaki]], printing equipment<ref name=Lane>Lane, Richard (1978). "Images of the Floating World." Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky. p33.</ref> brought back by [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi]]'s army from [[Korea]] in 1593 had far greater influence on the development of the medium. Four years later, [[Tokugawa Ieyasu]], even before becoming [[shogun]], effected the creation of the first native movable type,<ref name=Lane/> using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. He oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which were used to print a number of political and historical texts.
An edition of the [[Confucius|Confucian]] ''[[Analects]]'' was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of [[Emperor Go-Yōzei]]. This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable type printing extant today. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, it was soon decided that the [[running script]] style of Japanese writings would be better reproduced using woodblocks, and so woodblocks were once more adopted; by 1640 they were once again being used for nearly all purposes.<ref>Sansom, George (1961). "A History of Japan: 1334-1615." Stanford, California: Stanford University Press</ref>
It quickly gained popularity among artists of [[ukiyo-e]], and was used to produce small, cheap, art prints as well as books. Japan began to see something of literary mass production. The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, advice manuals, ''[[kibyōshi]]'' (satirical novels), ''[[sharebon]]'' (books on urban culture), art books, and play scripts for the ''[[jōruri]]'' (puppet) theatre. Often, within a certain genre, such as the ''jōruri'' theatre scripts, a particular style of writing would come to be the standard for that genre; in other words, one person's personal calligraphic style was adopted as the standard style for printing plays.
==Further development of woodblock printing in East Asia==
[[Image:Woodblock printing, Sera, 1993.JPG|thumb|Woodblock printing, [[Sera]] Monastery, Tibet. The distinctive shape of the pages goes back to [[Palm leaf manuscript]]s in ancient Buddhist India]]
In East Asia, woodblock printing proved to be more enduring than in Europe, continuing well into the 19th century as the major form of printing texts, especially in China, even after the introduction of the European printing press.
[[Jesuits]] stationed in China in the 16th and 17th centuries indeed preferred to use woodblocks for their own publishing projects,{{Fact|date=April 2007}} noting how inexpensive and convenient it was.{{Fact|date=April 2007}} Only with the introduction of more mechanized printing methods from the West in the 19th century did printing in East Asia move towards metal moveable type and the printing press{{Fact|date=April 2007}}
In countries using Arabic, Turkish and similar scripts, works, especially the [[Qu'ran]] were sometimes printed by [[lithography]] in the nineteenth century, as the links between the characters require compromises when movable type is used which were considered inappropriate for sacred texts.<ref> [http://www.answering-islam.org/Books/Zwemer/Translations/index.htm Qu'ran translations]</ref>
==On materials other than paper==
Block printing has also been extensively used for [[decoration|decorative]] purposes such as [[Textile|fabric]]s and [[wallpaper]]. This is easiest with repetitive patterns composed of one or a small number of [[motif (art)|motifs]] that are small to medium in size (due to the difficulty of carving and handling larger blocks). For a multi-colour pattern, each colour element is carved as a separate block and individually inked and applied. Block printing was the standard method of producing [[wallpaper]] until the early twentieth century, and is still used by a few traditionalist firms. It also remains in use for making cloth, mostly in small artisanal settings, for example in [[India]].
''See also'' [[woodblock printing on textiles]].
==See also==
{{History of printing}}
* [[Woodcut]]
* [[Woodblock printing on textiles]]
* [[Wood engraving]]
* [[Banhua]]
* [[old master print]]
* [[New Year picture]]
* [[ukiyo-e]]
* [[scroll]]
==References==
<references/>
==External sources==
* Jonathan Bloom, ''Paper Before Print''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
* Tsuen-Hsuin, Tsien. ''Science and Civilisation in China. Volume 5, Part 1: Paper and Printing''. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
* Imma Socias Batet, ''Les Beceroles tabel·làries de la Biblioteca de Catalunya''. Barcelona: Biblioteca de Catalunya, 1992.
==External links==
*[http://www.schoyencollection.com/Pre-Gutenberg.htm Excellent images and descriptions of examples, mostly Chinese, from the Schoyen Collection]
*The [http://www.hab.de/bibliothek/wdb/xylographica.htm digitized blockbooks] of the [[Herzog August Bibliothek]] Wolfenbüttel.
*[http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/apr2005.html Fine example of a European block-book [[Apocalypse]] with hand-colouring]
*[http://www.univie.ac.at/karikaturen/ Ukiyo-e Caricatures 1842-1905] Database of the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Vienna
*[http://www.vam.ac.uk/res_cons/conservation/journal/issue38/introduction/index.html Chinese book-binding methods, from the V&A Museum]
*[http://idp.bl.uk/education/bookbinding/bookbinding.a4d Chinese book-binding methods, from the International Dunhuang Project]
*[http://www.sharpweb.org/ Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing]
*[http://www.printinghistory.org/htm/misc/links.html American Printing History Association]—Numerous links to Online Resources and Other Organizations
*[http://www.emmaboyne.co.uk Emma Boyne] A practical example of contemporary Block printing
*{{Gutenberg|no=20195|name=Wood-Block Printing, by F. Morley Fletcher, Illustrated by A. W. Seaby}}
*[http://www.craftandartisans.com/indian-hand-block-printing.html Deatiled information on various Hand Block Printing areas In India]
*[http://www.saffronmarigold.com/catalog/about_block_printing.php A comprehensive photo album of the entire block printing process and a detailed description of the block printing process in the Jaipur tradition]
*[http://www.sashaworld.com/block/block.htm Block printing in India]
*Matrix at the Biblioteca de Catalunya [http://www.bnc.es/fons/detall.php?id=40]
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