Pi Sheng Relief Printing Report

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Throughout history, China had major contributions to the modernization of the global world and one of the sectors that had been revolutionized as a result is in writing, specifically printing. According to Phillip B. Meggs's History of Graphic Design, five hundred years prior to Johannes Gutenburg's invention of the mechanical movable type, Chinese people had already developed the process of relief printing. Relief printing involves having a text or image carved onto a surface and then the negative spaces around it are cut away to reveal the relief. After, the raised surfaced is inked and a paper is placed over and rubbed to transfer the image onto the paper (39). There is no single narrative of how relief printing came about, but instead, Meggs introduced two hypotheses that could bring an insight into the formation of the process. First, China developed engraved seals or stamps that were used often to create identification imprints on written works and paintings. Also, these carved blocks were …show more content…

Due to the tedious, delicate carving work that surrounded woodblock printing, Pi Sheng, a Chinese alchemist, tried to aid this practice by creating a movable type wherein each character is carved out on an individual block. According to his reasoning, this would allow him to easily set the characters in a sequence, get it inked and then printed onto a surface. In Pi Sheng's attempt of having a movable type, he formed his characters from clay and glue then they were heated to harden. Afterwards, they are arranged on an iron plate coated with wax which is later heated in order to melt the wax. As the wax cools down, it binds the individual type cubes into one solid block available for to be inked. After the text has been transferred down, the plate is heated again to loosen the wax and therefore allowed the characters to be separated again stored in wooden cases for later use

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