Section 100: Traditional Printing (Science and Technology)

The accompanying shopkeeper was very enthusiastic to guide the whole printing process. In one hall, printers are printing, and carved bookboards are numbered in thousand-character script, resting on shelves one by one. According to the serial number called out by the master, the apprentices carried the book plates to the special large desk. In the center of the hall are several large water tanks, filled with ink. The apprentices made ink in wooden barrels, brought it to each printer, and scooped it into the ink tray.

When printing, the printer uses a special cylindrical flat-bottomed brush dipped in ink, evenly brushes on the board surface, and then carefully covers the paper on the board surface, and gently brushes the paper with a brush, and the positive image of the text or picture is printed on the paper. Remove the paper from the printing plate, lay it on a shelf and dry, and the printing process is complete. The shopkeeper told Zhou Dongtian: A skilled printer can print 1500~2000 sheets a day. A good printing plate can be printed 10,000 times in a row.

In Zhou Dongtian's view, the stereotype process of engraving printing is a bit like the process of engraving seals, except that there are more engraved words. The process of printing is the opposite of sealing. The seal is printed on the top and the paper on the bottom. The process of engraving printing is more similar to rubbing. However, the characters on the engraving are the reverse characters of Yang, while the characters of the general stele are the orthography of the yīn script. In addition, the rubbing ink is applied to the paper, and the engraving printing ink is applied to the plate. It is no accident that engraving printing, which inherited the jishu of seals, rubbing, printing and dyeing, etc., was invented in China.

If the book is printed and sold well, then the bookstore's investment in printing the book is a one-time thing, and the rest is a net profit in addition to the cost of paper, ink and labor. If it is not easy to sell, the money invested in the engraving is equivalent to a loss, and the engraved version is either bulldozed and reused, or it can only be stored in the warehouse to sleep. Once the situation is in turmoil or the bookstore closes down, a large number of stereotypes will be reduced to chopping wood for fire. The bookstore owner is very careful about carving a book to make sure that every book will be sold.

So the number of prints owned becomes an important asset for a bookstore - especially those that guarantee that the books will be sold when they are printed. The shopkeeper told Zhou Dongtian quite complacently that there were more than 10,000 "perennial printable" plates in his bookstore, which was second to none in the bookstore in Nanjing.

Zhou Dongtian disagreed--the carved tablets in the Southern Song Dynasty were said to have more than 200,000 pieces, which is a remarkable number in terms of physical objects, and the space required to stack more than 200,000 engravings is very amazing. Not to mention the manpower and material resources that go into carving it. However, in terms of the amount of information contained, 200,000 pieces are only 200,000 pages of books, and according to the calculation of 200 to 300 pages of a book, it is only 1,000 books. Considering that stereotyped books generally have fewer words per page than modern printed materials, the amount of information is somewhat less. It's just the size of a unit library. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the official bookstore in Hangzhou only had 160,000 plates.

A four-library complete book, with 4,000 kinds of books, is barely enough for the scale of a street library in a small and medium-sized city. Zhou Dongtian knew that the scale of anything in the era of handicrafts was very small. Even if we adopt 19th-century jishu, the printing industry of this time and space is a complete failure.

Zhou Dongtian looked at the mountains of plates in the yard, and he was very emotional. China's printing technology has always been used on a large scale and has always stayed on expensive engraving printing, and it is difficult to publish books, and books are scarce and expensive. Many works have been lost because they have not been published or reprinted. This cannot but be said to be one of the reasons for the gradual lag behind the West.

He strolled to the second hall, which intrigued him at once—it turned out that the engraving was an image. The shopkeeper said that it is now carved and used in novels to "embroider images". A new copy of "Water Margin" is being carved in the bookstore.

"This is a 'complicated book' that Xiao Lao painstakingly collected, but it is not a 'simple book' outside." The shopkeeper's face lù sè proudly, "with the 'three signs'!" ”

Zhou Dongtian didn't know much about the editions of the Water Margin, and he couldn't figure out what "simplified" and "complicated" was, so he only echoed a few words. Merlin suddenly asked, "Do you print "Golden Vase Plum" here?" He regretted it a little when he asked this - doesn't it affect the image!

"Yes," the shopkeeper did not think it was different, "Xiao Lao has the same industry engraved "New Carved Embroidery Criticism of the Golden Vase Plum" for consignment, not only well-printed, but also 200 embroidered pictures in the book. It's a rare thing. ”

When I asked the price, this book cost one or two silver. The price is quite not cheap. Merlin decided to buy it.

"This book is in traditional Chinese, and I don't even read a sentence. Do you really want to buy it? Zhou Dongtian asked after the shopkeeper walked away for a moment.

"Of course I don't understand, but collecting a collection will be a precious material, a rare book!"

After a while, the shopkeeper took the book, which was packed in four letters. Heavy and weighty. Zhou Dongtian casually took out a book and flipped a few pages, only to feel that a smell of ink came to his nose, and the paper was delicate. The engravers and printers are all at the middle and upper level. Because the ink is used and the pages are not printed on both sides, there are a lot of bound books, and there are actually 36 volumes.

Each chapter is accompanied by two embroidered images. The level of engraving is much better than the level of the New Year paintings that Zhou Dongtian saw outside. Among them, there are inevitably some pictures of thieves, which are finely carved and extremely lùbone. It feels like a novel.

If we were to come up with it, it would be a hundred times better than its workmanship. Don't say it, the human body alone is stronger than this. Zhou Dongtian thought, should there be a big market for a comic of "Golden Vase Plum"? It's just that the original words are too troublesome.,I don't know if there's a comic with this theme over there.,And no one brought it.。

A question suddenly occurred to him and asked, "Who is the author of this book?" "I wonder if this historical mystery can be clarified in this time and space, not long after the work came out?

"The book is signed by Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng, but everyone says that it is Mr. Fengzhou's handwriting."

Mr. Fengzhou is Wang Shizhen. It was not news to Zhou Dongtian that it had been said that it had been the most marketable in modern times, shortly after the book came out, and that he was slightly disappointed.

"Some people say that it is the handwriting of a certain husband." The shopkeeper lowered his voice and said, "It's hard to say. ”

Zhou Dongtian nodded, obviously not getting a clear answer in this time and space.

The atmosphere at the end of the Ming Dynasty can be called open, and the affairs of men and women are not "shameful". The shopkeeper saw that the two masters were very interested in this, and immediately brought a bunch of such novels for them to buy, from the famous ones to the lesser-known "The Legend of the Crazy Woman", Lala is miscellaneous, and there are always as many as twenty or thirty kinds. Some have been lost in the old plane. I heard from the shopkeeper that these books are not sold badly, and they belong to the varieties that can be sold all year round. Zhou Dongtian flipped through a few books and felt that this business opportunity was also very good. At that moment, I paid ten taels of silver and bought all these books.

The shopkeeper of the bookstore made another good deal and became more and more attentive to them. 10 answers to one question. Zhou Dongtian turned his interest to the engraving workshop again, and saw that the workers who carved and embroidered the statue were different from just now, as if they were carving some kind of incomplete pattern, and after thinking for a while, he suddenly understood that this was a drawing board that was engraved and overprinted.

Walking down the hall confirmed his thoughts. This is engaged in "set color sè printing." ”

Engraving printing generally only uses single sè printing. In the fifth generation, some people began to try to carry out color sè printing, and the process was to put several different sè materials on different parts of the same board at the same time. Then print it on the paper at a time to print a colorful sheet. This method is called the "single-page reprinting method". The famous Tianjin Yangliuqing prints were produced using this method.

This method is low cost and fast speed, but the printing material is easy to mix and penetrate, and the sè block is clearly demarcated, and the pattern appears rigid.

From the Yuan Dynasty onwards, there was the so-called "multi-edition reprinting", which is also known as "overlay printing". Roughly speaking, it is necessary to engrave as many plates as you can with as many kinds of sè as you like, and each printing plate is coated with a different sè material and printed on the same sheet of paper in stages. The technique of overprinting color sè continued for a long time, and in addition to the printing house, it was used in printing and dyeing factories until the 20th century.

Nanjing has become the center of color sè overprinting in the Ming Dynasty, and general bookstores have the ability to color sè overprint.

Because the cost of printing is much larger--how many kinds of Yan sè have to prepare as many of the same carved plates, so the color sè overprinting of books in the Ming and Qing dynasties generally only uses two sè in vermilion ink, and only the printing of New Year paintings uses more Yan sè.

At the moment, the embroidered image that is being printed in the bookstore also uses only three kinds of faces. However, the shopkeeper was already very proud, saying that he was "sparing no effort to achieve perfection" this time.

During the whole visit, Zhou Dongtian knew from the shopkeeper that there were about 1,000 kinds of books that could be printed in the whole of Nanjing. It is divided into nine categories. There are tens of thousands of craftsmen, men, and vendors who depend on this for food. The business is booming. Books are not only exported to the provinces, but also exported in large quantities - especially to North Korea.

However, it is best to sell it as a "collection of essays", that is, "civil service examination tutorial book". Despite the fact that new books are written every year, they continue to sell well. Zhou and Mei couldn't help but sigh again.

Cai Yibang figured out that these two leaders were so interested in the bookstore that they wanted to open a bookstore. He was a native of Nanjing, and he had a few poor relatives who ate this bowl of rice, so he quickly seized this opportunity to recommend it to Zhou Dongtian.

Zhou Dongtian felt that this was not unavoidable, after all, the engraving master still needed it -- originally he came to Nanjing with the intention of recruiting a group of master engraving workers for the Lingao Printing Factory, and the Hangzhou Printing Factory also needed it. At the moment, he agreed to come down, and asked him to recruit as many printers as possible. RO@。