A little knowledge of block printing works

In the first year of Yuan Xing in the Eastern Han Dynasty (105), Cai Lun improved the paper-making technology of his predecessors, improved the quality of paper, and provided high-quality, light and cheap writing materials for the society. Since then, paper has gradually replaced bamboo and silk as the main writing material.

The Southern and Northern Dynasties witnessed the prosperity of paper manuscripts. The popularity of manuscripts greatly increased the output of books and promoted the spread of culture. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Emperor Liang Yuan collected more than 70,000 books in Jiangling and 370,000 books in Jiazetang in Sui Dynasty, which was the highest collection record of the ancient National Library of China.

In addition to official books, there are more and more private books, such as Guo Taiyou's five thousand volumes in the Jin Dynasty. At that time, only the government and rich people were able to collect books, and it was not easy for ordinary people to get one or two books, because books at that time were all manuscripts, and copying so many books took a lot of manpower and material resources.

In order to meet the social demand for books, there is an urgent need for a technology that can copy a large number of words. At that time, stamping and friction technology were widely used in society.

There are two kinds of seals: Yang Wen and Yin Wen. The words engraved in Yang Wen are convex, while those engraved in Yin Wen are concave. If the seal is used in Yang, it will be printed in black and white on paper, which is very eye-catching.

However, seals are generally small and the number of words printed is limited. Generally, the inscriptions are in negative, and the rubbings are printed in black and white, which is not eye-catching.

But rubbings have a great advantage, that is, the area of stone tablets is relatively large, and many words can be rubbings at a time. The combination of the two technologies complements each other, and block printing appears.

The operation steps of block printing are as follows: firstly, the delicate and hard wood is sawed into a thin plate, polished smoothly, the characters to be printed are written into a manuscript with thin paper, and then pasted on the board, and then the characters are carved into orthography with a knife according to the strokes of each character, so that the strokes of each character stand out on the board. After the board is carved, it can be printed.

When printing books, dip the brush in ink and evenly spread it on the block printing board. Then, cover the printing plate with white paper, gently and evenly coat a layer on the back of the paper with a clean brush, and a page of books will be printed. After page-by-page printing and binding, the book is a success.

Block printing is indeed a great invention. A book can print many copies as long as it is carved once, which is many times faster than handwriting.

2. Printing knowledge

Original publisher: pannianqun 1223

Introduction to the basic knowledge of printing: Advertising design is a visual art, and many things should be displayed intuitively. As a designer, you must also know the knowledge, technology and overall printing quality of printing. Pre-press operation refers to the preliminary work of printing process, including typesetting and imposition, color separation and scanning. The importance of its work mainly lies in mastering the software used by the computer in prepress operation, being familiar with the basic workflow of printing technology and having good graphics and image processing ability. At present, there is a serious problem in prepress operation in China: prepress operators are basically not printing professionals; Students in printing colleges basically don't know much about prepress work. This has caused a contradiction: how to deal with the combination of desktop system operation and printing professional technology. For designers who want to transfer from computer graphic design industry to prepress work, the first task is to master printing professional knowledge at all costs after contacting prepress work, otherwise it is very likely that they will not be able to carry out their work. Section 1 printing classification and technology 1. Printing is generally divided into: 1, letterpress printing: resin printing, carton printing, movable type printing and engraving printing, which are mostly used for monochrome books, stationery, cartons, extra-large posters and advertisements. 2. Lithography (offset printing): the most popular paper, film and pre-transfer printing at present. 3. Gravure printing: the printing level is the best, but the plate making is too expensive. 4, screen printing (stencil printing), the most common is screen printing; Mostly used for cloth, leather, toys, glass and surface treatment of local UV, matte, flash and so on. 5. Others: hot stamping, transfer printing, pad printing (mainly screen printing and relief printing), watermark printing (relief printing, large-size printing, such as large posters). Second, the printing process 1, computer graphic design (documents, such as AI, PDF, CDR, etc. ), proofing confirmation. 2, the film (draft

3. What is block printing process?

Block printing is an ancient printing method. It is a technological method to engrave characters and images on a flat wooden board, then brush ink on the wooden board, then cover it with paper, and brush it gently with a clean brush, so that the pictures and texts on the printing plate can be clearly transferred to the paper.

The process of engraving printing is as follows: firstly, engraving the printing plate, generally writing the contents to be engraved on paper, and then sticking the written paper draft on the surface of the prepared wood board, and engraving by the engraver according to the sample. Secondly, brush ink, that is, first fix the carved printing plate on a table, dip it in ink with a brush and spread it evenly on the surface of the printing plate, thus completing the process of brush ink.

Finally, printing. After the printing plate is inked, cover the surface of the printing plate with a piece of paper and gently pat the whole paper with a clean brush. After the paper is removed, printing is completed. The printing plates of printed books mainly use fine, uniform and easy-to-process wood, mainly including pear wood, jujube wood, catalpa wood, nanmu wood, boxwood and ginkgo wood.

Generally, pear and jujube are used in the north, and catalpa and boxwood are used in the south. Hard materials such as jujube and boxwood are mostly used to carve exquisite books and plates; Soft materials such as pear wood and catalpa wood are mostly used to carve the most common books and plates.

In the engraving of printing plates, the main tools used are carving knives, shovels and chisels of different specifications. Carving knives have different shapes and sizes, which are used to carve characters of different sizes and different parts of characters; Shovels and chisels are mainly used to carve blank parts of words.

In addition, saws, planers and other common woodworking tools and some auxiliary tools, such as straightedge, straightedge, stay wire and mallet, are needed. The process of engraving can be roughly divided into several steps, such as writing, loading, engraving, proofreading and repairing. , can only be used for printing after correction.

The early block printing technology was very simple, usually just a small printed page, such as a poem and a painting. Later, with the improvement of block printing technology, large-page printed matter appeared. The layout of printed matter is also constantly improved with the improvement of printing technology, and the types of printed matter are becoming more and more colorful.

At the beginning, the printed matter was in the form of a single page, and the layout was not fixed. At this time, the layout is mainly from top to bottom, and the layout is rectangular, which conforms to 1: 0. The golden ratio of 6 18.

Although the printed matter that appeared later was the whole book or the whole volume of Buddhist scriptures, it still used the scroll binding form of writing books. Apart from being highly uniform, the width was quite arbitrary, generally based on the width of a single sheet of paper. In the late Tang Dynasty, due to the emergence of whirlwind binding, folding binding, album binding and other book binding forms, the form of layout was unified.

"Woodcut Watermark", also known as short-run printing, appeared in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, which is an innovation of traditional woodblock printing technology. The so-called "simplified version" is to divide the picture of a painting into several pages with different sizes, each page is a picture, and engravings of different colors are made, and different parts of a piece of rice paper are printed one by one, which is to become the whole picture.

When there are many paintings, there are dozens or even hundreds of versions. These versions have different colors and patterns, and the marks are as thin as hair, with distinct layers. The printed watermark painting feels concave and convex, which is amazing.

The printing difficulty is equally amazing. Today, woodcut is rarely used, but "woodcut watermark" is still in use, mainly used to copy Chinese paintings and other works of art, with a little confusing effect.

4. What is the significance of block printing?

Block printing is an intangible cultural heritage with outstanding value, distinctive national characteristics and highly concentrated traditional skills.

It embodies several excellent traditional crafts such as papermaking, ink making, carving and copying in China, and finally forms this unique cultural craft; It created a technical precedent for later movable type printing, is the oldest technical source of modern printing in the world, and has made outstanding contributions to the development of human civilization; Its implementation provides the most convenient conditions for cultural and civilized exchanges. In other words, two of China's four great inventions, namely papermaking and printing, are directly related to it, which is rare in other traditional crafts in China.

Block printing is the only cultural form that has no geographical restrictions and spreads all over the country, and its influence even spreads overseas. As a national heritage, it belongs not only to China, but also to the world.

Block printing works are mostly used to print Buddha statues, Buddhist scriptures, almanac and so on.