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Meanwhile, in Western Europe, Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz developed a printing press method in the 1440s that scholars believe was invented independently of Chinese techniques.
Meanwhile, in Western Europe, Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz developed a printing press method in the 1440s that scholars believe was invented independently of Chinese techniques.
==Ming Dynasty==
The first full-color woodblock printing was developed in China in the late [[Yuan Dynasty]], with the earliest extant example being the frontispiece of a Buddhist sutra, dating to [[1346]].<ref name=schiro252>Conrad Schirokauer, et al, ''A Brief History of Chinese and Japanese Civilizations'', Fourth Edition, Cengage Learning (2012), 252.</ref>
By the end of the [[Ming Dynasty]], however, in the early 17th century, full-color erotic prints produced with a high degree of artistry were quite popular in China, some 150-200 years before Japanese ''[[shunga]]'' reached its heights.<ref name=schiro252/> These employed systems very similar to what the Japanese would develop centuries later, including the use of multiple blocks for multiple colors, registration marks to keep each subsequent impression properly lined up with the image elements already on the page, and so forth. Some features which separated Chinese practice from the later Japanese practice were the use of different colors for punctuation & commentary in a text, and the practice known as ''dòubǎn'' (餖版) "assembled block printing," in which multiple smaller woodblocks would be assembled on a page and printed simultaneously, rather than only using a single full-page block.<ref name=soren>Soren Edgren, presentation, Chinese & Japanese Woodblock Books symposium, Freer Gallery of Art, July 2011.</ref>
These techniques were initially used for single-sheet prints. The first book to make use of more than two colors was the ''Chengshi Moyuan'', printed in [[1604]]. This volume contained reproductions of European artworks, as well as an essay by [[Matteo Ricci]], the earliest extant example ever of printed, published romanization for Chinese. Multi-colored books began to be published in significant numbers from the 1620s onward.<ref name=soren/>
Many examples of Ming color-printed erotica believed to be no longer extant, or simply unknown, have emerged in the early 21st century, in the collection of a Japanese collector, Shibui Kiyoshi (d. 1992), whose collection may be the greatest collection of such materials in the world.<ref name=soren/>
==References==
==References==
*Bonnie Smith et al. ''Crossroads and Cultures''. Bedford/St. Martins (2012), 432-433.
*Bonnie Smith et al. ''Crossroads and Cultures''. Bedford/St. Martins (2012), 432-433.
<references/>
[[Category:Culture]]
[[Category:Culture]]
[[Category:Economics]]
[[Category:Economics]]
