Block printing
Block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia both as a method of printing on textiles and later, under the influence of Buddhism, on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to about 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.
In China
The earliest woodblock printed fragments are from China. They consist of printed flowers in three colours on silk. They are generally assigned to the Han Dynasty so date before 220 BC.[2] The earliest Egyptian printed cloth, in contrast, dates from a slightly later time, about the fourth century.[1] The technology of printing on cloth in China was adapted to paper under the influence of Buddhism which mandated the circulation of standard translations over a wide area, as well as the production of multiple copies of key texts for religious reasons. The oldest wood-block printed book is the Diamond Sutra, translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva in the fifth century. It carries a date on 'the 13th day of the fourth moon of the ninth year of the Xiantong era' (i.e. 11 May 868).[3] A number printed dhāraṇī-s, however, predate the Diamond Sūtra by about two hundred years (see Tang Dynasty).
In India
In Buddhism, great merit is thought to accrue from copying and preserving texts , the fourth-century master, listing the copying of scripture as the first of ten essential religious practices. The importance of perpetuating texts is set out with special force in the larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra which not only urges the devout to hear, learn, remember and study the text but to obtain a good copy and to preserve it. This ‘cult of the book’ led to techniques for reproducing texts in great numbers, especially the short prayers or charms known as dhāraṇī-s. Stamps were carved for printing these prayers on clay tablets from at least the seventh century, the date of the oldest surviving examples.[4] Especially popular was the Pratītyasamutpāda Gāthā, a short verse text summing up Nāgārjuna's philosophy of causal genesis or dependent origination. Nagarjuna lived in the early centuries of the current era and the Buddhist Creed, as the Gāthā is frequently called, was printed on clay tablets in huge numbers from the sixth century. This tradition was transmitted to China and Tibet with Buddhism. Printing text from woodblocks does not, however, seem to have been developed in India.
In Europe
Block printing was long practised in Christian Europe as a method for printing on cloth, where it was common by 1300. Images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate, and when paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small woodcut religious images and playing cards printed on paper. These prints were produced in very large numbers from about 1425 onwards.
Around the mid-century, block-books, woodcut books with both text and images, usually carved in the same block, emerged as a cheaper alternative to manuscripts and books printed with movable type. These were all short heavily illustrated works, the bestsellers of the day, repeated in many different block-book versions: the Ars moriendi and the Biblia pauperum were the most common. There is still some controversy among scholars as to whether their introduction preceded or, the majority view, followed the introduction of movable type, with the range of estimated dates being between about 1440–1460
