History of Printing

History of printing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Part of the series on the History of printing
Woodblock printing	200
Movable type	1040
Printing press	1454
Lithography	1796
Laser printing	1969
Thermal printing	circa 1972

The history of printing started around 3000 BC with the duplication of images. 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. 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.

Block printing

Main article: Woodblock printing

The ancient Greek amulet MS 5236 was created by block printing as early as the 6th century BC.

The ancient Greek gold amulet MS 5236 is a 6th century BC copper or bronze block print, containing an invocation of the god Phoebus Apollo. The applied printing technique has much in common with the later method of drypoint etching, but unlike drypoint MS 5236 is a colourless blind print. As such magical amulets are known to have been mass-produced at that time, its existence indicates that block printing was practised in ancient Greece at least to a degree.^[1][2]

Yuan Dynasty woodblock edition of aChinese play

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.^[3] 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. (to be continued)