Woodblock printing on textiles

What is Woodblock printing on textiles?

Woodblock printing is a way of colouring cloth with carved wooden blocks, pressed on by hand. The cloth is typically linen, cotton or silk. Each colour in a design needs a block of its own, so a many-coloured pattern is built up one impression at a time. In much of South Asia the block itself is called the chhapa. In India the work has long been a traditional occupation for printing communities such as the Chhipi and Chhimba. Delicate detail is hard to cut in wood, so fine lines and small shapes are set into the block as thin strips of brass or copper, letting a printer stamp stars, rosettes and fine spots.

Where does Woodblock printing on textiles come from?

No single place can claim the craft. Ancient China, Egypt and Assyria likely printed on cloth very early, growing out of stone and wood blocks carved to make impressions. India holds the strongest early record: there is direct evidence that people in Punjab and Mumbai printed textiles from early times, and block-printed cloth was reportedly being produced when Alexander invaded in 327 BC. China, for all its skill in ornamental weaving, left no sign of printing cloth as widely as India did. In Egypt, wall paintings at Beni Hasan, about 2200 to 1800 BC, show costumes covered in spots, stripes and zigzags of the kind stamping handles well, and printed fragments from cemeteries at Akhmim confirm Egypto-Roman work. Europe turned the craft into an industry by the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

How is Woodblock printing on textiles made?

A block starts as boards of pear, sycamore or plane wood glued together, kept two to three inches thick so it cannot warp; cheaper pine backs it, with each layer's grain running a different way. The design goes on as a tracing in lampblack and oil, the parts to print tinted for the cutter. Kept damp under wet cloths, the block is carved coarse shapes first, fine work last, until the pattern stands proud like letterpress type. Big areas of colour are cut in outline and packed with felt, which takes colour evenly. Fine detail defeats wood, so thin brass or copper strips are bent to shape and driven in edgewise, a method called coppering. A stone table padded with a woolen blanket and a floating colour sieve complete the kit.

Colours, motifs and borders

Each colour asks for its own block, so a design is planned as separate layers. Early patterns were simple geometry: the spotted, striped and zigzagged costumes in Beni Hasan paintings look stamped rather than woven or embroidered. Metal strips let a cutter add stars, rosettes and tiny spots that wood alone could not hold. One Egyptian method, recorded by Pliny, printed with mordants, agents that take up dye: mordants were stamped or brushed into white cloth, which then took several colours from a single dye bath. Rhenish printers pressed gold and silver foil into thin silk, and printed stout linen in black and dark tones.

Styles of Woodblock printing on textiles

Each region leaves its own mark. In South Asia the block is the chhapa; Japan had Ryōmin and Senmin printing classes, China its craftsmen and merchant families. Rhenish monasteries were long called the cradle of European block cutting, though some specimens behind that claim are now judged forgeries. Augsburg supplied printers to Alsace and Switzerland in the seventeenth century; French refugees, after the edict of Nantes was revoked, carried the trade to Holland, England and Switzerland. Britain's first works began near Richmond on the Thames in the late seventeenth century, then came Bromley Hall and others in Surrey. Mulhouse and Oberkampf's works at Jouy spread it further, before machinery, stereotype copying and engraved metal plates reshaped European printing in the nineteenth century.

What Woodblock printing on textiles means

For many families printing is not a hobby but an inherited trade. Indian communities such as the Chhipi, Chhimba, Chhapa and Chhapola have kept it as a traditional occupation, as craftsman and merchant classes did in China and the Ryōmin and Senmin in Japan. The cloth travelled too: beginning in the sixteenth century, European merchants, the Dutch above all, bought printed and painted calico to trade. Where the industry spread across Europe it met local and national prohibitions and protective rules, gradually overcome. Old prints survive in reliquaries, tombs, churches and museums, from Akhmim to Arles and Quedlinburg.

Questions people ask about Woodblock printing on textiles

Good reading and sources

• Printed Linen | unknownV&A, Article

• Woodblock printing on textiles on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data