1633
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Ten Bamboo Studio Painting and Calligraphy Handbook (Shizhuzhai shuhua pu): Volume One is a 1633 by Hu Zhengyan, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a book of printed pages showing bamboo stalks, rocks, and calligraphy in soft blues, greens, and browns. This book was one of the first to use color printing in China. Each page was made by carving separate woodblocks for every color, then pressing them one after another so the colors lined up perfectly. The process took years. To see how this compares to later Chinese color printing, look up the *Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting*.
Color printing reached a level of perfection in the early 1600s, as seen in this Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Painting and the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting (printed 1679 and 1701). The painterly quality, precision in registering (aligning) the woodblocks, and harmonious colors made them the most successful color print editions in Chinese history. Both editions were printed and compiled in Nanjing, spread nationwide, and had a great impact on the arts in Japan and Korea.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Hu Zhengyan was a Chinese artist, printmaker and publisher. He worked in calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, and seal-carving, but was primarily a publisher, producing academic texts as well as records of his own work.
See the richer artist page
