Woodblock printing

Young monks printing Buddhist scriptures using the

rubbing technique, Sera Monastery in Tibet

Woodblock printing (or block 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 AD.
Woodblock printing existed in Tang China
during the 7th century AD and remained
the most common East Asian method of
printing books and other texts, as well as
images, until the 19th century. Ukiyo-e is
the best known type of Japanese
woodblock art print. Most European uses
of the technique for printing images on
paper are covered by the art term
woodcut, except for the block-books
produced mainly in the 15th century in
India.

Seals and stamps

Prior to the invention of woodblock
printing, seals and stamps were used for
making impressions. The oldest of these
seals came from Mesopotamia and
Egypt. The use of round "cylinder seals"
for rolling an impress onto clay tablets
goes back to early Mesopotamian
civilization before 3000 BC, where they
are the most common works of art to
survive, and feature complex and
beautiful images. A few much larger
brick (e.g. 13×13 cm) stamps for marking
clay bricks survive from Akkad from
around 2270 BC.[1] There are also Roman
lead pipe inscriptions of some length
that were stamped, and amulet MS 5236
may be a unique surviving gold foil sheet
stamped with an amulet text in the
6th century BC. However none of these
used ink, which is necessary for printing
(on a proper definition), but stamped
marks into relatively soft materials. In
both China and Egypt, the use of small
stamps for seals preceded the use of
larger blocks. In 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 17th century.

Technique
Woodcut press, from engraving in Early Typography
by William Skeen, Colombo, Ceylon, 1872

The wood block is carefully prepared as

a relief pattern, which means the areas to
show 'white' are cut away with a knife,
chisel, or sandpaper 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
necessary only 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.
There are three methods of printing to
consider:

Woodblock for textile printing, India, about 1900,

22×17×8 cm

Stamping
Used for many fabrics, and most early
European woodcuts (1400–40). These
items were printed by putting paper or
fabric on a table or a 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. Used for European
woodcuts and block-books later in the
15th century, and very widely for cloth.
The block is placed face side up on a
table, with the paper or fabric on top.
The back of the paper or fabric 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]

Colour woodblock printing

Mino province: Yoro-taki from the series Views of

Famous Places in the Sixty odd Provinces by
Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces by
Hiroshige, an ukiyo-e artist

The earliest woodblock printing known is

in colour—Chinese silk from the Han
dynasty printed in three colours.[3] On
paper, European woodcut prints with
coloured blocks were invented in
Germany in 1508 and are known as
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 (Chinese: 程⽒墨苑), 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 17th
century. Notable examples are the Hu
Zhengyan's Treatise on the Paintings and
Writings of the Ten Bamboo Studio of
1633,[4] and the Mustard Seed Garden
Painting Manual published in 1679 and
1701.[5]

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.

History of woodblock
printing
 

Yuan-dynasty woodblock edition of a Chinese play

Origins in Asia

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 AD
220).[3] It is clear that woodblock printing
developed in Asia several centuries
before Europe. The Chinese 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
(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 about four hundred years
after the development of movable type
by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the
Northern Song Dynasty of China.

 
Coloured woodcut Buddha, 10th century, China

In China, an alternative to woodblock

printing was a system of reprography
since the Han Dynasty using carved
stone steles to reproduce pages of
text.[6] 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 or
2nd century BC. Woodblock printing on
papyrus seems never to have been
practised, although it would be possible.
A few specimen of wood block printing,
possibly called tarsh in Arabic,[7] have
been excavated from a 10th-century
context in Arabic Egypt. They were
mostly used for prayers and amulets. The
technique may be spread from China or
an independent invention,[8] but had very
little impact and virtually disappeared at
the end of the 14th century.[9] In India the
main importance of the technique has
always been as a method of printing
textiles, which has been a large industry
since at least the 10th century.[10] Large
quantities of printed Indian silk and
cotton were exported to Europe
throughout the Modern period.
Because 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 invented in Korea in the 13th
century,[11] 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
80,000 woodblocks), and the purity of
validated woodblocks could be
maintained for centuries.[12] 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 printed books in China

and Korea

The intricate frontispiece of the Diamond Sutra from

Tang Dynasty China, the world's earliest dated
printed book, AD 868 (British Library)

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
(AD 627~649).

The oldest existing print done with wood-

blocks was discovered in 1974 in an
excavation in Xi'an (the capital of Tang-
Dynasty China, then called Chang'an),
Shaanxi, China, whereby individual
sheets of paper were pressed into
wooden blocks with the text and
illustrations carved into them.[13] It is a
dharani sutra printed on hemp paper and
dated to 650 to 670 AD, during the Tang
Dynasty (618–907).[13] Another printed
document dating to the early half of the
Chinese Tang Dynasty has also been
found, the Saddharma pundarika sutra
printed from 690 to 699.[13]

Dharani sutra replica exhibited at National Museum

of Korea

An early example of woodblock printing

on paper is The Great Dharani Sutra that
is dated between AD 704 and 751. It was
found at Bulguksa, South Korea in
1966.[14] Its Buddhist text was printed on
a 8 cm × 630 cm (3.1 in × 248.0 in)
mulberry paper scroll in the early Korean
Kingdom of Unified Silla. Another version
of the Dharani sutra, printed in Japan
around AD 770, 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 (AD 868)

printed book is a Chinese scroll about
sixteen feet long containing the text of
the Diamond Sutra. It was found in 1907
by the archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein
in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, and is
currently in the possession of the British
Library. 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. 11 May, AD 868 ].

 
Finely crafted books — like the Compendium of
Materia Medica shown above — were produced in
China as early as the ninth century.[15]

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 AD 1000
"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
14th 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.[16] Only relatively
small volumes (juan 卷) 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.[17]
Japanese woodblock prints

Under the Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, an ukiyo-

e artist

The earliest known woodblock printing

dates from 764-770, when Empress
Shotoku commissioned one million small
wooden pagodas containing short
printed scrolls—typically 6 cm × 45 cm
(2.4 in × 17.7 in)—to be distributed to
temples.[18] Apart from the production of
Buddhist texts, which became
widespread from the 11th 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.

Though the Jesuits operated a movable

type printing-press in Nagasaki, printing
equipment[19] which Toyotomi
Hideyoshi's army seized from Korea in
1593[20] had far greater influence on the
development of the medium. Four years
later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even before
becoming shōgun, effected the creation
of the first native movable type,[19] 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 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 writing 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.[21]
The technology quickly gained popularity
among publishers, and was used to
produce affordable prints as well as
books. As a result, Japan began to see
something of literary mass production
and increasing literacy. 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.

Diffusion in Eurasia

The technique is found through South

and Central Asia, and in the Byzantine
world for cloth, and by AD 1000
examples of woodblock printing on paper
appear in Islamic Egypt. Printing onto
cloth had spread much earlier, and was
common in Europe by 1300. "In the 13th
century the Chinese technique of
blockprinting was transmitted to
Europe",[22] soon after paper became
available in Europe. 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]

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 19th
century.

15th-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 a single block for a whole
page, appeared in Europe in the mid-15th
century. As they were almost always
undated and without statement of printer
or place of printing, determining their
dates of printing has been an extremely
difficult task. Allan H. Stevenson, by
comparing the watermarks in the paper
used in blockbooks with watermarks in
dated documents, concluded that the
"heyday" of blockbooks was the 1460s,
but that at least one dated from about
1451.[23][24] Block books printed in the
1470s were often of cheaper quality, as a
cheaper alternative to books printed by
printing press.[25] Block books continued
to be printed sporadically up through the
end of the 15th century.[23]

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 also: 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.

The method was also used extensively

for printing playing cards.[26]

Further development in East

Asia
 

Woodblock printing, Sera Monastery, Tibet. The

distinctive shape of the pages in the Tibetan books
(called Pechas) goes back to Palm leaf manuscripts
in ancient Buddhist India

Woodblocks for printing, Sera monastery in Tibet

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.

In countries using Arabic, Turkish and

similar scripts, works, especially the
Qur'an were sometimes printed by
lithography in the 19th century,[27] as the
links between the characters require
compromises when movable type is used
which were considered inappropriate for
sacred texts.

Nianhua were a form of coloured

woodblock prints in China, depicting
images for decoration during the Chinese
New Year.
Types of wood used by the
Chinese

A woodblock from China Block Printing Museum in

Yangzhou

Dr. Henry, in his "Notes on the

Economic Botany of China,"
refers to your wish to obtain
specimens of the woods used in
China for printing blocks. The
name which the neighbouring
city of Wuchang enjoys for the
excellence of its printing work
has led me to inquire into the
woods used there, and I am
sending you specimens of them
by parcel post. The wood which
is considered the best is the
Veng li mu, which has been
identified as the Pyrus
betulcefolia, Bunge., and which
grows in this Province. Slabs of
this wood 1 ft. x 6 ins. x 1^ in.
cost 150 cash, or about 5½.d. A
cheaper wood generally used
for printing proclamations is
the tu chung mu. Eucommia
ulmoides, Oliv., has been
determined to be the tu chung
mu. The tu chung here used is a
native of this Province. A wood
used in Kiangsu is the yin hsing
mu, which is one of the names
of the Salisburia adiantifolia.
Boxwood, huang yang mu, is
obtained from Szechuen, but
only in small pieces, which are
mainly used for cutting the
stamps used for private seals
on letters and documents.

In the third volume of the

Japanese work, the "So Mokn
 Sei Fu," a drawing is given of
the huang yang, together with
a quotation from the Chinese
Materia Medica, which speaks
of the tree as growing an inch
a year, except in these years
which have an intercalary
moon, when it grows
backwards. From this it would
appear to be a slow growing
tree.

W. R. Carles, Esq., to Royal Gardens, Kew,

dated Her Majesty's Consulate, Hankow,
July 25, 1896.[28]
Materials other than paper

Mohammed Khatri a traditional Woodblock Printing

Artist of Bagh, Madhya Pradesh, India.

Bagh Print Traditional Woodblock printing on textile

in Village Bagh Madhya Pradesh, India.
Block printing has also been extensively
used for decorative purposes such as
fabrics, leathers 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 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 20th
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.
William Morris was one artist who used
woodblock printing to produce patterned
wallpaper and textiles during the late
19th century. Examples of Morris' work
are housed in the Victoria and Albert
Museum. The museum also holds a
number of Morris' original woodblocks,
which are still in limited use.

See also
Woodcut
Banhua
Old master print
New Year picture
Kalamkari
Ghalamkar
 Bagh Print
Textile printing

References
1. "21. Pre-Gutenberg Printing" .
www.schoyencollection.com. Schøyen
Collection.
2. Hind, Arthur M. An Introduction to a
History of Woodcut, p64-94, Houghton
Mifflin Co. 1935 (in USA), reprinted Dover
Publications, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20952-0
3. Shelagh Vainker in Anne Farrer (ed),
"Caves of the Thousand Buddhas", 1990,
British Museum publications, ISBN 0-
7141-1447-2
4. "Shi zhu zhai shu hua pu" . Cambridge
Digital Library. Retrieved 11 August 2015.
5. Sickman, L.; Soper, A. (1971). The Art
and Architecture of China. Pelican History
of Art (3rd ed.). Penguin. ISBN 0-14-
056110-2.
6. Berner, R. Thomas (1997). "The Ancient
Chinese Process of Reprography".
Technology and Culture. 38 (2): 424–431.
JSTOR 3107128 .
7. See (Bulliet 1987), p. 427: "The thesis
proposed here, that the word tarsh meant
"printblock" in the dialect of the medieval
Muslim underworld".
8. See (Bulliet 1987), p. 435: "Printing in
Arabic appears in the Middle East within a
century or so of becoming well
established in China. Moreover, medieval
Arabic chronicles confirm that the craft of
paper making came to the Middle East
from China by way of Central Asia, and
one print was found in the excavation of
the medieval Egyptian Red Sea port of al-
Qusair al-Qadim where wares imported
from China have been discovered.
Nevertheless, it seems more likely that
Arabic block printing was an independent
invention".
9. See (Bulliet 1987), p. 427: "Judging
from palaeography and the eighth-century
date of the introduction of paper to the
Islamic world, Arabic block printing must
have begun in the ninth or tenth century. It
persisted into, but possibly not beyond,
the fourteenth century"... "Yet it had so
little impact on Islamic society that today
only a handful of scholars are aware it
ever existed, and no definite textual
reference to it has been thought to
survive".
10. "Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online,
Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and
Asian Art" .
11. "Fifty Wonders" (PDF). Korean Hero.
Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-
09-04. Retrieved 2013-01-29.
12. Thomas Christensen (2007). "Did East
Asian Printing Traditions Influence the
European Renaissance?" . Arts of Asia
Magazine (to appear). Retrieved
2006-10-18.
13. Pan, Jixing (1997). "On the Origin of
Printing in the Light of New
Archaeological Discoveries". Chinese
Science Bulletin. 42 (12): 976–981 [pp.
979–980]. doi:10.1007/BF02882611 .
ISSN 1001-6538 .
14. North Korea — Silla
Countrystudies.us accessed 2009-12-03;
A History of Writings in Japanese and
Current Studies in the Field of Rare Books
in Japan Archived 2008-11-20 at the
Wayback Machine - 62nd IFLA General
Conference, Ifla.org, accessed 009-12-03;
Gutenberg and the Koreans: The Invention
of Movable Metal Type Printing in Korea ,
Rightreading.com, 2006-09-13, accessed
2009-12-03; Cho Woo-suk, JoongAng
Daily Archived 2011-07-19 at the
Wayback Machine, November 22, 2004,
Eng.buddhapia.com, accessed 2009-12-
03; National Treasure No. 126-6 , by the
Cultural Heritage Administration of South
Korea (in Korean), jikimi.cha.go.kr,
accessed 2009-12-28; National Treasure
No. 126-6, by the Cultural Heritage
Administration of South Korea (in
Korean)
15. Meggs, Philip B. (1998). A History of
Graphic Design. John Wiley & Sons. p. 24.
ISBN 0-471-29198-6.
16. "Dunhuang concertina binding
findings" . Archived from the original on
2000-03-09.
17. [1]
18. [2]
19. Lane, Richard (1978). Images of the
Floating World. Old Saybrook, CT:
Konecky & Konecky. p. 33. ISBN 1-56852-
481-1.
20. Ikegami, Eiko (2005-02-28). Bonds of
Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the
Political Origins of Japanese Culture .
Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 9780521601153.
21. Sansom, George (1961). A History of
Japan: 1334–1615. Stanford, California:
Stanford University Press.
22. Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. (1970). The Rise
of Modern China. New York: Oxford
University Press. p. 830. ISBN 0-19-
501240-2.
23. Carter p. 46.
24. Allan H. Stevenson, The
Quincentennnial of Netherlandish
Blockbooks, British Museum Quarterly,
Vol. 31, No. 3/4 (Spring 1967), p. 83.
25. Master E.S., Alan Shestack,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1967
26. created 2003 - 2005 Early Card
painters and Printers in Germany, Austria
and Flanders (14th and 15th century) .
Retrieved 28 February 2010.
27. "Qur'an translations" . Answering-
islam.org. Retrieved 2009-12-03.
28. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1901).
Kew bulletin . LONDON: H. M. Stationery
Office. p. 217. Retrieved 22 November
2011. "Dr. Henry, in his "Notes on the
Economic Botany of China," refers to your
wish to obtain specimens of the woods
used in China for printing blocks. The
name which the neighbouring city of
Wuchang enjoys for the excellence of its
printing work has led me to inquire into
the woods used there, and I am sending
you specimens of them by parcel post.
The wood which is considered the best is
the Veng li mu, which has been identified
as the Pyrus betulcefolia, Bunge., and
which grows in this Province. Slabs of this
wood 1 ft. x 6 ins. x 1^ in. cost 150 cash,
or about 5½.d. A cheaper wood generally
used for printing proclamations is the tu
chung mu. Eucommia ulmoides, Oliv., has
been determined to be the tu chung mu.
The tu chung here used is a native of this
Province. A wood used in Kiangsu is the
yin hsing mu, which is one of the names
of the Salisburia adiantifolia. Boxwood,
huang yang mu, is obtained from
Szechuen, but only in small pieces, which
are mainly used for cutting the stamps
used for private seals on letters and
documents. In the third volume of the
Japanese work, the "So Mokn Sei Fu," a
drawing is given of the huang yang,
together with a quotation from the
Chinese Materia Medica, which speaks of
the tree as growing an inch a year, except
in these years which have an intercalary
moon, when it grows backwards. From
this it would appear to be a slow growing
tree. W. R. Carles, Esq., to Royal Gardens,
Kew, dated Her Majesty's Consulate,
Hankow, July 25th, 1896."

Works cited

Bulliet, Richard W. (1987). "Medieval Arabic

Tarsh: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of
Printing" (PDF). Journal of the American
Oriental Society. 107 (3): 427–438.
Retrieved 2019-01-17.
 Lane, Richard. (1978). Images from the
Floating World, The Japanese Print. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
ISBN 9780192114471; OCLC 5246796

External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related
to Woodblock printing.

Centre for the History of the Book

Excellent images and descriptions of
examples, mostly Chinese, from the
Schoyen Collection (Archived May 11,
2008, at the Wayback Machine)
Fine example of a European block-
book Apocalypse with hand-colouring
Chinese book-binding methods, from
the V&A Museum
Chinese book-binding methods, from
the International Dunhuang Project
Chinese woodblock prints from SOAS
University of London
American Printing History Association
—Numerous links to Online Resources
and Other Organizations
Wood-Block Printing, by F. Morley
Fletcher, Illustrated by A. W. Seaby at
Project Gutenberg
Block printing in India
Prints & People: A Social History of
Printed Pictures , an exhibition catalog
from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
 (fully available online as PDF), which
contains material on woodblock
printing
The History of Chinese Bookbinding:
the case of Dunhuang findings
Video: Block-printed wallpaper , a
video demonstrating printing of
multicolored wallpaper with a press,
using blocks produced by William
Morris

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