Letterpress,
a centuries-old printing technique, is making an elegant comeback in China as
designers, artists and consumers are rediscovering the beauty and craftsmanship
behind it.
Gaining
a new lease on life
Essentially a kind of movable type printing, letterpress is a
technique of relief printing that came into being in the mid-15th century.
German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg converted a wine press into a printing
press, which turned inked letters into reams of books and remained as the norm
of printing for five centuries.
"The movable type printing is our heritage as it was
invented by Bi Sheng in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) and then was
spread to the West some 400 years later," said Peng Junzhang, initiator of
China's first letterpress art festival.
Gutenberg's inventions played a key role in ushering in the era
of mass communication, adding fuel to the Renaissance and the Reformation,
which enlightened minds and permanently altered the structure of society.
In the
West, the computer revolution in the 1970s gave birth to cheaper, faster ways
of transferring words and images onto paper, dooming the old practice of
arranging clunky type blocks in a massive metal press to obsolescence.
After nearly three decades in oblivion, letterpress came back
from the dead as its aesthetic appeal was extolled by media personalities such
as Martha Stewart, also known as Queen of Domestic Arts in the US. In the
1990s, her weddings magazine began featuring personalized letterpress
invitations, giving rise to the revival of the retro-style printing craft.
While in China, letterpress had remained as the mainstay of the
printing industry until Chinese scientist Wang Xuan fathered Chinese character
laser-photo-typesetting system in 1974 that gradually brought Chinese character
printing into the electrical and digital age.
The revival of letterpress has been in full swing in other parts
of the world over the past decade.
Josh
Durham, a history teacher from the US, and his wife evangelized China's letterpress-printed
art movement when they opened the Paper Pounder Press in July 2011 in Beijing.
"So far, there are no more than 20 letterpress studios in
China," Peng noted. "The printing technique is still under the radar
in China. But I believe it is set to flourish like it did in many other
countries."
Having frequented numerous international letterpress festivals
over the past few years, Peng was so impressed by the beauty and design of
those letterpress products that he decided to host one in China.
His dream came true on October 18 when industry practitioners,
letterpress devotees, teachers and students of design majors from home and
abroad attended the festival in Beijing, joining their hands to preserve and
promote the art and craft.
"People in the cultural and creative industries have found
that letterpress is highly valuable to their creations and businesses,"
said Sun Yang, founder of iloovee, a Beijing-based letterpress studio known for
its wedding invites.
"A
printing technique that I thought had faded in the back pages of the industry
history has come back to life. What a surprise!" said Liang Jiong,
associate professor of Prepress with the Beijing Institute of Graphic
Communication.
She got a bigger surprise on learning that some artisans have
held fast to the art and craft of letterpress printing for decades.
Chang Chieh-kuan is such an example. The 67-year-old operates
the famed Rixing Type Foundry which his father founded in 1969 in Taipei.
His foundry is the only haven left in the world that still
produces traditional Chinese movable type character molds for letterpress
printing.
"But in the 1980s, lead type foundries, the all-time leader
of the traditional printing industry, dropped like flies in Taiwan," Chang
recalled.
Despite
the industry's unrecoverable demise, Chang, calling himself a headstrong fool
from Taiwan, has managed to keep Rixing in operation.
It is meaningful to keep the foundry alive as founding played a
significant role in the history of mankind's civilization, said Chang, who is
transforming Rixing into an interactive museum.
In traditional letterpress printing, founding is the very first
step of the whole laborious process followed by checking, typesetting,
printing, and folding; the revived technique is technologically upgraded and
thus less laborious.
Cha Dian, literally meaning "Tea canon", featuring a letterpress printed cover is crowned as China’s Most Beautiful Book in 2017.
To create a letterpress item, a photopolymer plate featuring a
digitally-created design made in Illustrator or InDesign is first customized.
Properly inked, the raised surface of the plate then bites into the soft, thick
paper made from cotton or linen, under the force applied to an antique press.
The Rixing Type Foundry in Taipei boasts the last collection of copper molds used in the creation of traditional Chinese type characters
The process yields a solid impression on the paper that is
stunning to see and feel. However, such a debossed effect could not be realized
on thin paper in traditional letterpress printing. Nor is it valued by the
traditional letterpress craftsmen and their clients. What they most value is a
printer's ability of making sure each stroke of a character is adequately and
evenly inked, Chang said.
"The
revival of letterpress lies in its marriage with ideal ink and paper, creating
an irresistible quality. That's what attracts designers and consumers
essentially," noted Liang, who is planning to introduce letterpress to her
students aside from teaching them mainstream printing techniques such as
lithography.
Thanks to the newfound visual and tactile appeal, an increasing
number of artisans are embracing this aged technique.
Featuring letterpress cards with original designs, custom design
services, and courses on letterpress printing, a workshop called Wu Fen Shu in
East China's Hangzhou has fared well since its opening in June, according to
Zhou Zi, the workshop's co-owner.
Zhou is one of the entrepreneurs who are eyeing the market of
letterpress workshops that focus on customizing letterpress products and
offering hands-on experience on a manual press.
Zhou, a
fresh graduate of visual communication design, decided to open such a shop upon
graduation with two of her college buddies who are also fascinated with
letterpress thanks partly to what used to trouble them back in college.
"We used to commission printing factories to get our
designs printed in small numbers, but more often than not, we were rejected as
they only took orders requiring at least hundreds of copies," the young
designer told this website.
Noting that many more design majors like them have been beset by
such a headache, Zhou and her buddies thought about creating a workshop that
takes small orders to create convenience for students who are of weak spending
power.
In addition to serving students, the 110-square-meter workshop
also attracts many who are eager to try their hands on an ancient letterpress
machine to DIY their own letterpress items, each paying about 200 yuan to 500
yuan ($28.52-$71.3).
Despite the high price, it seems more people are being drawn to
this kind of ancient printing technique. "Some companies even organized
their team building parties in our workshop, which is sort of out of my
expectation," said Zhou.
The
endeavors of artisans and designers have borne fruit as letterpress-printed
products are winning more and more consumers in China.
"The beauty and elegance inhering in letterpress have kept
drawing people to know about it, and pay higher prices for letterpress
products," said Peng Junzhang, a letterpress enthusiast, better known as
the king of high-end business cards in China.
who remolded the letterpress machine to make it less
demanding and more efficient, applied the printing technique to business card
making, which turned out to be a huge success.
"Although the need for exchanging business cards is
shrinking in the age of social media, upscale ones, each priced at 300 yuan
($42.45) or more, are in greater demand than those priced at around 30 yuan
($4.25)," Peng noted.
Letterpress-printed
business cards made with stylish designs are favored by those who want to
showcase their tastes, Peng added.
