1. 9 AD - Woodblock Printing  Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text, images, or patterns using carved wood and used widely throughout East Asia. It originated in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper.

2. Woodblock Technique  The woodblock is carefully prepared as a relief matrix, which means the areas to show ‘white’ are cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving characters or image to show in ’black’ at the original surface level.

3. Reverse Mirror Image  The block is cut along the grain of the wood. The content of the design would print ‘in reverse’ or as a mirror image, a further complication when text was involved.

4. The art of carving a woodcut is technically known as xylography.

5. Ukiyo-e “Pictures of the floating world”

6. Ukiyo-e is a concept representing an impermanent, fleeting beauty. Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese woodblock prints and paintings produced between the 17 th and the 20 th centuries, featuring motifs of landscapes, tales from history, and the theatre. It is the main artistic genre of woodblock printing in Japan.

7. Chiaroscuro Woodblock Printing

8. What is a Chiaroscuro Woodcut?  European woodcut prints using colored blocks were invented in Germany in 1508 and are known as chiaroscuro woodcuts.  In some German two-block prints, the key block (or ‘line block’) was printed in black and the tone block had flat areas of color.  Chiaroscuro woodcuts do not necessarily feature strong contrasts of light and dark, but are old master prints in woodcut using two or more blocks printed in different colors.

9. There are three methods of printing to consider.  1. Stamping – Used for many fabrics and most early European woodcuts.  2. Rubbing – The most common for Far Eastern printing and widely used in Europe on cloth (15 th century).  3. Printing with a press – Asia has only recently used the printing press. Europe developed a mechanical press in 1450 AD.