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THE ORIGIN OF PRINTMAKING ART

The history and origin of ZhuXianZhen’s wooden board New Year paintings.
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The history and origin of ZhuXianZhen’s wooden board New Year paintings.

The wooden block New Year pictures of ZhuXianZhen originated during the Tang Dynasty, flourished during the Song Dynasty, and reached their peak during the Ming Dynasty. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the capital of Dongjing was the center of politics, economy, and culture in the country, and merchants from all over the country flocked to the capital. The large urban class promoted the development of secular literature and art, and the active secular literature and art provided rich soil for the creation of New Year pictures. In addition, the invention of movable printing pushed the Chinese woodblock printing industry to prosperity. Since then, New Year pictures have also turned from brushstrokes to woodblock printing. At that time, the printing and sales of wooden block New Year pictures in Dongjing were unprecedented. Not only were there folk workshops all over the capital, but even the Song court also ran New Year picture workshops. Integrating government-run and private workshops made the development of wooden block New Year pictures inevitable. In the late Northern Song Dynasty, due to the invasion of the Jin army, the capital fell and the prosperous urban culture gradually declined. Many New Year picture artists fled to the south of the Yangtze River. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, ZhuXianZhen, with its well-connected waterways, quickly became a commercial center in the Central Plains. The wooden block New Year pictures quickly recovered in the prosperous commercial town, and business was booming. At that time, there were more than 300 workshops in ZhuXianZhen engaged in this industry. In the late Qing Dynasty, due to the obstruction of the waterways in ZhuXianZhen, the waterways were not navigable, and the wooden block New Year pictures and other businesses gradually declined.

In the early days of the Republic of China, there were more than 40 production workshops in the town, and more than 2,000 people were engaged in the production of New Year pictures. Customers from Shandong, Anhui, Hebei, Jiangsu, and other places came in droves, and business was very prosperous. Before the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the wooden block New Year picture industry in ZhuXianZhen moved to Kaifeng, thus launching the third peak of prosperity for wooden block New Year pictures. At that time, there were more than 60 New Year picture workshops in Kaifeng, mainly concentrated on East Street, West Street, Zhongshan Road, and bookstore street. After 1949, the city of Kaifeng established organizations such as the Kaifeng ZhuXianZhen Wooden Block New Year Picture Society, to excavate and organize traditional techniques of wooden block New Year pictures.

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