The Ancient Chinese Process of Reprography

Abstract

Cover Design THE ANCIENT CHINESE PROCESS OF REPROGRAPHY R. THOMAS BERNER China is credited with four major technological contributions to the world—paper, printing, gunpowder, and the mariner’s compass. Additionally, the Chinese get credit for silk, tea, porcelain, various plants, herbal medicines, lacquer, playing cards, dominoes, wallpa­ per, the folding umbrella, the kite, zinc in coins, goldfish, and the discovery of coal.1 Another invaluable contribution was the use of rubbings as a form of reprography, a method of preserving and re­ producing words and pictures still in use today. One of the best places in China to learn about rubbings and the related stone carvings is the Museum of Steles in Xi’an, the ancient capital of China and home to the terra cotta warriors. The museum had been established in the Yuan-yu reign (a.d. 1086-93) of the Song dynasty. Its collection includes stones carved with the Confucian clas­ sics and dated a.d. 781.2 Late in the Han Dynasty (206 b.c.-a.d. 220) the production of steles (sculptured stones) increased greatly.3 Eight hundred years before the establishment of the museum, the Chinese suffered through a book-burning imposed by the emperor Qin Shihuang. When he died, the Chinese began engraving books in stone as a way ofpreserving them. Rubbings were encouraged as a way ofpopulariz­ ing literature.4 Today, the Museum of Steles contains more than twenty-three hundred stone records “hand written by well-known scholars from Mr. Berner is professor ofjournalism and American studies at Pennsylvania State University. ’Derek Bodde, China’s Gifts to the West (Washington, D.C., 1942), passim. ’Hartmut Walravens, ed., Catalogue ofChinese RubbingsfromField Museum (Chicago, 1981), pp. xviii-xix. ’Ibid., p. xxv. 4J. C. Kwei, “China’s Stone Libraries,” China Journal of Science and Arts 9, no. 3 (1928): 171-74; Michael Loewe, Everyday Life in Early Imperial China (New York, 1988), pp. 96-97.© 1997 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/97/3802-0005$01.00 424 Ancient Chinese Reprography 425 the Han Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty (1616-1911). Some are rare treasures. There are also paintings carved on stone, and historical documents and classic books carved on tablets, making it praised as a library of stone inscriptions unique in the world.”5 In order to get a rubbing of each stele, one would need an estimated six thousand large sheets of paper.6 The Chinese were not the first to make rubbings, and it appears that the technique may have arisen in many civilizations simulta­ neously. The Greeks, for example, borrowed the technique from the Chaldeans, Etruscans, and Egyptians and adapted it to their own purposes, including cutting maps. The Greeks, however, did not ap­ preciate the potential for reduplication and would cut new engrav­ ings every time they had to make additional copies.7 The Chinese, on the other hand, recognized that they could make many copies or single copies time and again from the same stone. What some call rubbings others call ink-imprints or ink-squeezes. The Chinese call the process “copy by tapping.”8 The rubbing pro­ cess used today in China is assumed to be the same as the technique used centuries before.9 Here is one explanation: The engraved surface which is to be duplicated is first covered with a thin, moistened paper. Using a stiff brush, the paper is pressed into all the crevices and indentions constituting the in­ scription. A silk or cotton pad dipped in ink is then dabbed, or squeezed, which gives the technique its name, over all the raised areas. When the paper is peeled off, it retains, in white charac­ ters on a black background, a clear exact impression of the engraved text. Technical precursors to the block-printing process can be identified in the application of the paper to the engraving and in the application of the ink to the areas in re­ lief.10 First, something—a picture or calligraphy—was painted on stone. Then it was carved. After that, it could be rubbed (fig. 1). The pro­ cess resembles familiar scenes at the Vietnam War Memorial, from ’LanxingHong, “Route...