Yuan Dynasty woodblock edition of a 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 textiles and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220, and from Egypt to the 4th century.^[1] Ukiyo-e is the best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the art term woodcut, except for the block-books produced mainly in the fifteenth century. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (419x644, 71 KB) Summary A Yuan dynasty (1206-1368) woodblock edition of a zaju play entitled Zhuye Zhou. ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (419x644, 71 KB) Summary A Yuan dynasty (1206-1368) woodblock edition of a zaju play entitled Zhuye Zhou. ... Capital Dadu Language(s) Mongolian Chinese Government Monarchy Emperor  - 1260-1294 Kublai Khan  - 1333-1370 (Cont. ... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer Ukiyo-e woodcut, Ishiyama Moon by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1889) Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface... The term Old Master Print is used to describe works of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition (European or New World). ... A page from an 18th century printed book by Nishikawa Sukenobu depicting Hina Matsuri (Dolls Festival) events. ... For other uses, see Print. ... East Asia Geographic East Asia. ... For other uses, see Textile (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Paper (disambiguation). ... View of Mount Fuji from Numazu, part of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō series by Hiroshige, published 1850 Ukiyo-e ), pictures of the floating world, is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer Ukiyo-e woodcut, Ishiyama Moon by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1889) Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface... Yuan Dynasty woodblock edition of a 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. ...

Technique

The wood block is prepared as a 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. A relief print is an image created by a printmaking process, such as woodcut, where the areas of the matrix (plate or block) that are to show printed black (typically) are on the original surface; the parts of the matrix that are to be blank (white) having been cut themselves... Xylography, an early form of wood engraving, was first seen in China in the 1st century. ...

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.

Young monks printing Buddhist scriptures using the rubbing technique, Sera Monastery, Tibet

There are three methods of printing to consider: Image File history File linksMetadata Woodblock_printing,_Sera,_Tibet. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Woodblock_printing,_Sera,_Tibet. ... SERA can be an abbreviation of either of the following: Strengthening Emergency Response Abilities (SERA) Project or simply Strengthening Emergency Response Abilities Project (Ethiopia) Southern Education and Research Alliance (South Africa) Socialist Environment and Resources Association (United Kingdom) Suburban Electric Railway Association (or SERA), based at Coventry Railway Centre, Warwickshire... This article is about historical/cultural Tibet. ...

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".^[2]

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 Gutenberg-type printing press in that location.^[2]

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.^[3] Mechelen: Grote Markt square, with St. ... For other uses, see Flanders (disambiguation). ...

Development of Block Printing

Coloured woodcut Buddha, 10th century, China

The use of round "cylinder seals" for rolling an impress onto clay tablets goes back to early Mesopotamian 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 prints were often printed on silk until at least the seventeenth century. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 592 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (600 × 608 pixels, file size: 70 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 592 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (600 × 608 pixels, file size: 70 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... Mesopotamia was a cradle of civilization geographically located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq. ... The term Old Master Print is used to describe works of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition (European or New World). ... For other uses of this word, see Silk (disambiguation). ...

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).^[3] The earliest Egyptian printed cloth dates from the 4th century.^[4] but the dry conditions in Egypt are exceptionally good for preserving fabric compared to, for example, India. It is not clear if the Egyptian printing of cloth was learned from China, or elsewhere, or developed separately.^{[citation needed]} Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (202 BC–9 AD) Luoyang (25 AD–190 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy History  - Establishment 206 BC  - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC  - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24  - Abdication to Cao Wei 220...

It is clear that the Chinese were the first by several centuries 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 (woodcuts). 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. Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer Ukiyo-e woodcut, Ishiyama Moon by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1889) Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface... For the weblog software, see Movable Type. ...

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. For other uses of this word, see Silk (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Cotton (disambiguation). ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

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 or 2nd century BC. Woodblock printing on papyrus seems never to have been practised, although it would be possible. In the art of sculpture, a relief is an artwork where a modelled form projects out of a flat background. ... An ink is a liquid containing various pigments and/or dyes used for coloring a surface to render an image or text. ... It has been suggested that Textile be merged into this article or section. ... For other uses, see Paper (disambiguation). ... The 3rd century BC started the first day of 300 BC and ended the last day of 201 BC. It is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period. ... (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) The 2nd century BC started on January 1, 200 BC and ended on December 31, 101 BC. // Coin of Antiochus IV. Reverse shows Apollo seated on an omphalos. ... For other uses, see Papyrus (disambiguation). ...

Because the 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.^[5] 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". A character encoding is a code that pairs a set of characters (such as an alphabet or syllabary) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses. ... For the weblog software, see Movable Type. ... For the weblog software, see Movable Type. ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 11th century was that century which lasted from 1001 to 1100. ... (12th century - 13th century - 14th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 to 1300. ... The Tripiṭaka (Sanskrit त्रिपिटक, lit. ...

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. This article is about the Korean peninsula and civilization. ...

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. The printing press is a mechanical device for printing many copies of a text on rectangular sheets of paper. ...

Early Books

The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from Tang Dynasty China, the world's earliest dated printed book, 868 AD (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 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 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. Image File history File links Jingangjing. ... Image File history File links Jingangjing. ... For the band, see Tang Dynasty (band). ... The British Museum in London, England is one of the worlds greatest museums of human history and culture. ... A statue of the Sakyamuni Buddha in Tawang Gompa, India. ... Wu Zetian (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) (625 – December 16, 705), personal name Wu Zhao (武曌), was the only woman in the history of China to assume the title of Emperor. ... position in China Street of Turfan View of the Flaming mountains Emin minaret, Turfan Turfan (Uyghur: تۇرپان; Uyghur latin: Turpan; Modern Chinese 吐魯番, Pinyin: Tǔlǔfán; ) is an oasis city in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the Peoples Republic of China. ... For the county in Shanxi province, see Xinjiang County. ... For other uses, see Tokyo (disambiguation). ...

A woodblock print of the Dharani sutra dated between 704 and 751 AD was found at Bulguksa, South Korea in 1966. [1] [2] [3] [4] Its Buddhist text was printed on a mulberry paper scroll 8 cm wide and 630 cm long in the early Korean Kingdom of Unified Silla. Bulguksa is a Buddhist temple in the North Gyeongsang province in South Korea. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had subsequently been accepted by... Binomial name Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) Vent. ... Unified Silla is the name often applied to the Korean kingdom of Silla after 668. ...

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, 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 ]. Events 11 May: Printing of The Diamond Sutra, the oldest dated printed book. ... The Chinese Diamond Sutra, the oldest known dated printed book in the world, printed in the 9th year of Xiantong Era of the Tang Dynasty, i. ... Year 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Monday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Archaeology or sometimes in American English archeology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. ... Image:AurelStein. ... The Mogao Caves, or Mogao Grottoes (Chinese: ; Pinyin: ) form a system of 492 temples 25km (15. ... Location of Dunhuang Dunhuang (Chinese: , also written as 燉煌 till early Qing Dynasty; Pinyin: ) is a city in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China. ... The British Museum in London, England is one of the worlds greatest museums of human history and culture. ... In publishing, a colophon describes details of the production of a book. ... Events 11 May: Printing of The Diamond Sutra, the oldest dated printed book. ...

Finely crafted books—like the Bencao (materia medica) shown here—were produced in China as early as the ninth century.^[6]

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 scrolls, but 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.[5] Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 574 pixelsFull resolution (2286 × 1640 pixel, file size: 1. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 574 pixelsFull resolution (2286 × 1640 pixel, file size: 1. ... The Tripiṭaka (Sanskrit त्रिपिटक, lit. ... For other uses, see Scroll (disambiguation). ... An example of a stitched bound book. ... First page of the Codex Argenteus A codex (Latin for block of wood, book; plural codices) is a handwritten book, in general, one produced from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages. ...

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 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.^[2] The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered at its capital in Constantinople. ... Europe in 1000 The year 1000 of the Gregorian Calendar was the last year of the 10th century as well as the last year of the first millennium. ... The term Old Master Print is used to describe works of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition (European or New World). ... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer Ukiyo-e woodcut, Ishiyama Moon by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1889) Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface... Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. ... Some typical modern playing cards. ...

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

Three episodes from a block-book Biblia Pauperum illustrating 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.^[7] 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 Donatus. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 440 × 599 pixels Full resolution (564 × 768 pixel, file size: 360 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Page from a Biblia Pauperum, 15th century Faithful reproductions of two-dimensional original works cannot attract copyright in the U.S. according to the rule... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 440 × 599 pixels Full resolution (564 × 768 pixel, file size: 360 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Page from a Biblia Pauperum, 15th century Faithful reproductions of two-dimensional original works cannot attract copyright in the U.S. according to the rule... The Biblia pauperum (Paupers Bible) was a tradition of picture Bibles beginning in the later Middle Ages. ... The Ascension from a Speculum Humanae Salvationis ca 1430, see below Typology is a theological doctrine of theory of types and their antitypes found in Scripture. ... For other uses, see Annunciation (disambiguation). ... Gideon may refer to: Gideon (album), a 1980 album by Kenny Rogers Gideon, a character in the book of Judges Gideons International GIDEON-Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology Network Gideon the Elder, a character in Charmed Gideon (comics), a Marvel Comics Supervillain Gideon v. ... For the weblog software, see Movable Type. ... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer Ukiyo-e woodcut, Ishiyama Moon by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1889) Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface... Aelius Donatus (fl. ...

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. Jacobs Ladder from a Speculum of ca. ... Pride of the spirit is one of the five temptations of the dying man, according to Ars moriendi. ... The Biblia pauperum (Paupers Bible) was a tradition of picture Bibles beginning in the later Middle Ages. ... The term Old Master Print is used to describe works of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition (European or New World). ...

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. Printing press from 1811, photographed in Munich, Germany. ...

Colour

Large Waterfall by Hiroshige, a ukiyo-e artist

The earliest woodblock printing known is in colour—Chinese silk from the Han Dynasty printed in three colours.^[3] Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2006x3019, 1239 KB) Source: http://visipix. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (2006x3019, 1239 KB) Source: http://visipix. ... Memorial portrait of Hiroshige by Kunisada. ... View of Mount Fuji from Numazu, part of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō series by Hiroshige, published 1850 Ukiyo-e ), pictures of the floating world, is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of... For other uses of this word, see Silk (disambiguation). ... Han Dynasty in 87 BC Capital Changan (202 BC–9 AD) Luoyang (25 AD–190 AD) Language(s) Chinese Religion Taoism, Confucianism Government Monarchy History  - Establishment 206 BC  - Battle of Gaixia; Han rule of China begins 202 BC  - Interruption of Han rule 9 - 24  - Abdication to Cao Wei 220...

On paper, European woodcut prints with coloured blocks were invented in Germany in 1508 and are known as chiaroscuro woodcuts. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Tenebrism. ...

Colour is very common in Asian woodblock printing on paper; in China the first known example is a book on ink-cakes printed in 1606 and the technique reached its height in books on painting published in 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.^[8]

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. Nishiki-e (錦絵, a brocade picture) refers to multi-colored woodblock printing, especially of ukiyo-e. ...

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.

Japan

Main article: Woodblock printing in Japan

The earliest known woodblock printing dates from 764-770, when an Empress commissioned one million small wooden pagodas containing short printed scrolls (typically 6 x 45 cm) to be distributed to temples.[6] 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-Japanese dictionary of 1590 is the earliest known example. A page from an 18th century printed book by Nishikawa Sukenobu depicting Hina Matsuri (Dolls Festival) events. ... A pagoda at Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia This article is about the building style. ... A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had subsequently been accepted by...

Though the Jesuits operated a movable type printing-press in Nagasaki, printing equipment^[9] 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,^[9] 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. The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu), commonly known as the Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order. ... For the weblog software, see Movable Type. ... Printing press from 1811, photographed in Munich, Germany. ... Nagasaki ) ( ) is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan. ... This is a Japanese name; the family name is Toyotomi Toyotomi Hideyoshi ) February 2, 1536 or March 26, 1537 – September 18, 1598) was a sengoku daimyo who unified Japan. ... This article is about the Korean peninsula and civilization. ... Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu The Tokugawa clan crest This is a Japanese name; the family name is Tokugawa Tokugawa Ieyasu (previously spelled Iyeyasu) January 31, 1543 – June 1, 1616) was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until... Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate Shōgun )   is supreme general of the samurai,a military rank and historical title in Japan. ...

An edition of the 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.^[10] Confucius (Chinese: ; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kung-fu-tzu), lit. ... Engraving of Confucius. ... Emperor Go-Yōzei (後陽成天皇 Go-Yōzei-tennō) (December 31, 1572 - September 25, 1617) was the 107th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. ... Running script (Chinese: 行書, Pinyin: XíngshÅ«, Japanese: gyōsho) is a semi-cursive style of Chinese calligraphy. ...

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. View of Mount Fuji from Numazu, part of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō series by Hiroshige, published 1850 Ukiyo-e ), pictures of the floating world, is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of... Kibyōshi ) is a genre of Japanese picture book (Kusazoushi )) produced during the middle of the Edo period. ... Jōruri is a type of sung narrative with shamisen accompaniment, typically found in Bunraku, a traditional Japanese puppet theatre. ...

Further development of woodblock printing in East Asia

Woodblock printing, Sera Monastery, Tibet. The distinctive shape of the pages goes back to Palm leaf manuscripts 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. Image File history File linksMetadata Woodblock_printing,_Sera,_1993. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Woodblock_printing,_Sera,_1993. ... SERA can be an abbreviation of either of the following: Strengthening Emergency Response Abilities (SERA) Project or simply Strengthening Emergency Response Abilities Project (Ethiopia) Southern Education and Research Alliance (South Africa) Socialist Environment and Resources Association (United Kingdom) Suburban Electric Railway Association (or SERA), based at Coventry Railway Centre, Warwickshire... Palmleaf Manuscripts - used extensively in Ancient India writes P S Iyer Palmleaf was used as paper to record and preserve thoughts, knowledge and mythical narratives. ...

Jesuits stationed in China in the 16th and 17th centuries indeed preferred to use woodblocks for their own publishing projects,^{[citation needed]} noting how inexpensive and convenient it was.^{[citation needed]} 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^{[citation needed]} The Society of Jesus (Latin: Societas Iesu), commonly known as the Jesuits, is a Roman Catholic religious order. ...

On materials other than paper

Block printing has also been extensively used for decorative purposes such as fabrics and wallpaper. This is easiest with repetitive patterns composed of one or a small number of motifs that are small to medium in size (due to the difficulty of carving and handling larger blocks). For a multicolour 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. Look up Decoration in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... For other uses, see Textile (disambiguation). ... Mary Cassatts painting of two ladies drinking tea in a room with red-blue striped wallpapers. ... In art, a motif is a repeated idea, pattern, image, or theme. ... Mary Cassatts painting of two ladies drinking tea in a room with red-blue striped wallpapers. ...

See also

• Woodcut
• Wood engraving
• Banhua
• old master print
• New Year picture
• ukiyo-e
• scroll

The Phaistos Disc (Phaistos Disk, Phaestos Disc) is a curious archaeological find, likely dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age. ... For the weblog software, see Movable Type. ... The printing press is a mechanical device for printing many copies of a text on rectangular sheets of paper. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Intaglio printing. ... Lithography stone and mirror-image print of a map of Munich. ... Folding Card, The Old Woman Who Lived in A Shoe, 6 April 1883. ... Offset printing is a widely used printing technique where the inked image is transferred (or offset) from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface. ... Screen-printing, also known as silkscreening or serigraphy, is a printmaking technique that creates a sharp-edged single-color image using a stencil and a porous fabric. ... A flexographic printing plate. ... A thermal printer (or direct thermal printer) produces a printed image by selectively heating coated thermochromic paper, or thermal paper as it is commonly known, when the paper passes over the thermal print head. ... A small, much-used Xerox copier in a high school library. ... 1993 Apple LaserWriter Pro 630 laser printer A laser printer is a common type of computer printer that rapidly produces high quality text and graphics on plain paper. ... A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer refers to a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like a typewriter. ... An Epson inkjet printer Inkjet printers are a type of computer printer that operates by propelling tiny droplets of liquid ink onto paper. ... Samsung SPP-2040 working. ... Digital printing is the reproduction of digital images on physical surface, such as common or photographic paper, film, cloth, plastic, etc. ... Three-dimensional printing is a method of converting a virtual 3D model into a physical object. ... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer Ukiyo-e woodcut, Ishiyama Moon by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1889) Woodcut is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface... Thomas Bewick. ... Banhua (Chinese: 版画) is the Chinese umbrella term for any printed art objects, and especially for those made in the Chinese style. ... The term Old Master Print is used to describe works of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition (European or New World). ... A New Year picture (Chinese: 年画), is an important and popular Banhua in China. ... View of Mount Fuji from Numazu, part of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō series by Hiroshige, published 1850 Ukiyo-e ), pictures of the floating world, is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints (or woodcuts) and paintings produced between the 17th and the 20th centuries, featuring motifs of... For other uses, see Scroll (disambiguation). ...

References

1. ^ http://touregypt.net/featurestories/fabrics.htm
2. ^ ^{a b c} 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
3. ^ ^{a b c} Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed), "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas" , 1990, British Museum publications, ISBN 0-7141-1447-2
4. ^ http://touregypt.net/featurestories/fabrics.htm
5. ^ Thomas Christensen (2007). Did East Asian Printing Traditions Influence the European Renaissance?. Arts of Asia Magazine (to appear). Retrieved on 2006-10-18.
6. ^ Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1998. (p 24) ISBN 0-471-291-98-6
7. ^ Master E.S., Alan Shestack, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1967
8. ^ L Sickman & A Soper, "The Art and Architecture of China", Pelican History of Art, 3rd ed 1971, Penguin, LOC 70-125675
9. ^ ^{a b} Lane, Richard (1978). "Images of the Floating World." Old Saybrook, CT: Konecky & Konecky. p33.
10. ^ Sansom, George (1961). "A History of Japan: 1334-1615." Stanford, California: Stanford University Press

Year 2006 (MMVI) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... is the 291st day of the year (292nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

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.

External links

• Excellent images and descriptions of examples, mostly Chinese, from the Schoyen Collection
• Fine example of a European block-book Apocalypse with hand-colouring
• Ukiyo-e Caricatures 1842-1905 Database of the Department of East Asian Studies of the University of Vienna
• Chinese book-binding methods, from the V&A Museum
• Chinese book-binding methods, from the International Dunhuang Project
• American Printing History Association—Numerous links to Online Resources and Other Organizations
• Emma Boyne A practical example of contemporary Block printing
• Wood-Block Printing, by F. Morley Fletcher, Illustrated by A. W. Seaby, available at Project Gutenberg.
• Deatiled information on various Hand Block Printing areas In India
• A comprehensive photo album of the entire block printing process and a detailed description of the block printing process in the Jaipur tradition
• Block printing in India