What is the purpose of woodblock printing?

Answer 1

Although I'm no expert on the subject, I did a fair amount of block printing back during the 60s and early 70s. To begin to understand the process, first think of a small cube of wood, say two inches by two inches, by two inches. Also imagine that the faces are sanded so that each is a smooth flat plane [this is important so that all of the image gets transfered to the printing paper]. Then imagine [actually you can practice this explanation to help your understanding] pressing one of those smooth faces firmly onto an ink pad, like is used for office stamps, to get the face "inked up." Then firmly press that inked face onto a clean sheet of paper. When the block is removed, there will be a two inch square image [the full face of the block] imprinted on the paper. Now imagine drawing a one inch diameter circle on one of the faces, and then, using an Exacto Knife, or any other method of cutting away of the wood, and trim off about an 8th of an inch of wood, all around the outside of the circle. That will leave a round flat surface standing above the newly cut face of the block. When that face of the block is inked, as in the first example, and again pressed onto the sheet of paper, it will leave an image which will be a round, fully filled in circle. Now imagine cutting a star pattern and a rectangle pattern on another face of the block. The inked image from that carving will be a star and a rectangle printed at the same time. Using this technique, amazingly fine art prints can be made. The only critical points to this basically simple process are: 1. The "printing," or contact surfaces of the different images on the same face of the block MUST be in the same smooth plane in order to fully and evenly transfer the ink [image] when pressed to the paper. 2. Also, if doing any object for which left to right orientation is necessary [such as letters or numbers] the image must be reversed when applied and cut into the block face. Since wood can be difficult to carve, this process is often done more easily using special blocks which usually can be bought already prepared at art supply stores. These are called "linoleum blocks." You can make your own by gluing smooth linoleum onto smooth, flat faces of any size block you want. It is much easier to carve the linoleum face and to remove material where you don't want ink to be picked up and where you don't want ink to print on the paper. I may have forgotton to cover some points, but with luck, an expert will come along to improve this answer. Don't worry about screwing it up, for if you start with free, simple, plain wood blocks from thrown away wood scraps, you can't really "ruin" anything, so just play around with the process until you get the hang of it. Good luck.

Answer 2

Put yourself in the shoes of a 19th century handbill printer. One day, you heard the cry, "Go west, young man!" You closed your shop, traded your house for a wagon and team of oxen, and joined a wagon train heading west. Here's your problem: handbill type is large and, if it's made from lead, heavy. Everything you've got for your trip has to be able to be pulled by four oxen. You can choose to carry either a few tons of lead that will do nothing for you until you get it to where you're going and absolutely nothing else, or carry just a set of body matrices, a few hundred pounds of lead to cast small text faces with, and carving tools to make handbill type from wood. The latter is what they chose to do--because, by making type from wood cut at their new homes, they could also bring their equipment, household goods and families. So...that's the purpose of woodblock printing: to be able to print without having to bring five thousand pounds of lead from New Jersey to Utah.

Answer 3

It was a popular technique from East Asia for early texts, drawings, and patterns on cloth and wallpaper.