Centuries-old printing technique makes a comeback
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E-mail chinadaily.com.cn, November 20, 2019
However, its revival in China came a bit late.
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 long lasting spell
"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.
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