Print Culture

• what do you mean by calligraphy?

  The art of beautiful and stylised writing
• For what purpose book were printed in imperial state in china?


  The imperial state in china was, for a very long time, the major producer of printed material china possessed a huge bureaucratic system which recruited its personnel through civil service examination Text book for this examination were printed in vast amount under the sponsership of imperial state from the sixteeth century the number of examination candidate went and that increased the volume of print
• reading became a leisure activity the new readership preferred fictional narratives poetry autobiographies and romantic plays
• Western printing technology and mechanical press were introduced in the late nineteenth century
• Shanghai became the hub of new print culture catering to the western side schools
• From hand printing there was a gradual increase to mechanical printing
• The oldest know printed book is diamond sutra
• vellum is know as a parchment made from the skin of animals
• When and how italians began to produce printed books?

  in 1295 Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to italy after many years he bought the knowledge back with him. Now italians began producing books with woodblocks and soon the technology speard to other parts of europe
• Johann Gutenberg Developed the first know printing press in 1430s.
• The production of hand written manuscripts could not satisfy the ever increasing demand for books. copying was and expensive laborious and time consuming business Manuscript were akward to handle and could not be carried around or read easily
• By the early fifteenth century, woodblocks were being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards, and religous pictures with simple breif texts
• By 1448 gutenberg perfected the system. The first book he printed was the bible. About 180 copies were printed and it took three years to produce them. by the standards of the time this was fast production