Chinese New Year Colour Prints

Originally posted 14th April 2015

by The Pearl

At the end of the exhibition to see the Site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was a display of old woodcut prints.

Tea House Full of Guests
Late Qing

Three way red-and-black printing  and three-colour overprinting appeared as early as the Song and Yuan Dynasties and reached its peak during the Ming Dynasty.  The Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual produced in the Qing Dynasty revived the process.

It appears that these were traditionally produced by the Shanghai Jiujiaochang (Temple of the Town Gods) for the celebration of each New Year from 1843 onwards.  They show Chinese traditional upper class life in beautiful detail and changed with the times to reflect the influence of Western styles from the International Settlement. Five or six blocks were generally used to produce each picture.  The stamping/printing process involves printing the various colours in sequence from light to darkrattan yellow, green, carmine, eosin (which produces blue) and purple.  Really high quality pictures may have up to nine colours (and therefore nine wooden blocks) including overprinting with gold and ink for highlighting for patterns on clothes.  Facial features may be added by hand on high quality prints.

i.e.

Snatching a bride after work in front of the silk factory
Qing Dynasty

To start, the artists drafted the original picture on tissue paper and then different monochromatic proofs were made.  Sometimes the artists were famous painters in their own right.  The pictures were stuck onto the pear wood or jujube wood in reverse and engravers removed those areas that would remain uncoloured for that particular colour way. This is done initially for the ink outlines which are then used for printing the black outlines.  Then the engravers carve the corresponding coloured blocks.
For printing the the wooden block is placed face up.  The block is then inked and rice paper placed over the block, it is rubbed over with a burnisher and then the rice paper is lifted immediately after it has been printed.  After hundreds of rice paper images have been printed, the block is changed and the next colour way printed with its corresponding coloured ink, repeating the process over and over again thereby producing many editions of the original print each with a multitude of colours.