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 textilesand later paper. As a method of printing on cloth,
the earliest surviving examples from China date
to before 220 AD, and woodblock printing 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.
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.
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