Topic 3: The introduction of printing

Printing is now know to have been first developed in the seventh century in Korea and China, where printing from wooden blocks was developed. The Diamond Sutra, dated 868 is one of the most famous of these early printed works, and combines words and pictures. By the 14th century the technique of printing from metal type had been developed in Korea.

Printing is the technique of making an impression on paper (or on other substances such as vellum) from inked type (or as the techniques developed, from plates, blocks, or cylinders). From this type, the most important aspect of printing is that it permits a large number of copies to be made from each setting of type.
During the period from the invention of printing in Europe until 1700, most books were printed on wooden printing presses, using metal type.

Printing in Europe
The techniques of printing were developed in Europe by craftsmen ignorant of these advances in the Far East. As in China, the earliest printing took the form of illustrated sheets printed from carved wooden blocks (known as woodblock printing). These illustrations were largely religious in nature, simple in design, and meant to be coloured by hand, and were made by largely anonymous craftsmen, and very few examples have survived.

The development of printing took a dramatic step forward thanks to the technological advances made by Johan Gutenberg, a Goldsmith working in Mainz, Germany, in the middle of the 15th century.

His revolutionary idea was to use metal to cast each letter individually as a piece of ‘type’, so that a number of individual pieces (or letters) would be fitted together to make up a word, sentence, paragraph, and eventually an entire text or book. Once the printing had been finished, the type could be broken up from its settings, and re-used to print another book. This invention of ‘moveable’ (and re-useable) type enabled printing to become a viable economic alternative to making books by hand (known as manuscripts).

Gutenberg’s invention produced what is regarded as a landmark in the history of printing, and of western civilisation: an edition of the Bible in Latin, known as the Gutenberg Bible (or sometimes as the 42-line Bible, as each page is made up of 42 lines of type). It was made at his workshop in Mainz between 1453 and 1455, and was certainly complete by 1456. It consists of over 1,300 large pages, in two volumes, and although we do not know exactly how many copies were originally produced, we do know that 180 were offered for sale, and that forty-eight copies survive today, about twenty of them complete. The book was printed with two-colours, black and red, and was produced to an exceptionally high standard, even more so considering the experimental processes which must have been required to achieve any kind of result.

Source:http://www.britaininprint.net/introtoprint/intro.htm

The best known block book:


Block books
-books were printed in Europe from engrave wooden blocks, one block for 2 pages.
- they were made using the relief matrix (the area to show white will be cut away)
- cut along the grain of the wood
- there were three methods of printing
i)stamping - These were printed by putting the paper/fabric on a table or other flat surface with the block on top, & pressing or hammering the back of the block
ii)rubbing - The block goes face up on a table, with the paper or fabric on top. The back is rubbed with a hard pad, a flat piece of wood, a burnisher, or a leather frotton
iii)printing in a press

I read on further and found out that there are limitations on blockbook printing.
- can only be printed on one side of the page
- two pages per sheet
- time consuming
- curved letters on block are very fragile
- limited life span due to the ink on the block