The Necessity of Hand Printing

Abstract

''Pearl of the Snowlands: Buddhist Printing at the Derge Parkhang, featured at the Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts, is the first presentation in the United States of books and prints from the Tibetan Derge Parkhang printing temple. Along with vibrant and colorful examples of Tibetan woodblock printing, extensive color photographs and ethnographic video offer viewers an unprecedented opportunity to study the historical, cultural, and religious implications of this distinctive printing method. Patrick Dowdey, curator of Wesleyan University's Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies; Clifton Meador, artist and Director of Columbia College's MFA program in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts, and Padma'tsho of the Southwest University for Nationalities in Chengdu conducted three years of field research in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in what is now western Sichuan, to prepare this exhibition. The exhibition attests to the remarkable beauty of Derge Parkhang printing as well as its long and tumultuous history pointing especially to times when this Parkhang's future hung in the balance. Early struggles for leadership and the repression of Tibetan religious expression under the rule of the Chinese Communists in the 1950s left many of the Parkhang destroyed throughout Tibet. A Derge communist party official undertook an ad hoc preservation effort to catalog, store, and protect the Derge Parkhang's woodblocks against future damage by turning it into a medical dispensary, making a later resurgence of printing possible. The Derge Parkhang reopened in the 1980s as the printing temple it is today. Tsewang Jirme Rinpoche, Director and Living Buddha of Derge Parkhang's Bon School of Tibetan Buddhism, offered Meador and Dowdey full access to their repository of 300,000 woodblocks used for books, thangka, prayer flags, and mandates, Founded in 1729, the Derge Parkhang currently functions as a living institution in which major Tibetan texts such as the Buddhist Sutra, Commentaries, and Thangka, as well as non-religious works of history, science, medicine, and literature are produced. The thousands of woodblock-printed books are the result of a remarkable production process, described in the exhibition's photographs, videos, and texts. As with all woodblocks, they are cut in reverse so that they print right reading--a monumental challenge considering the extensive texts and distinctive calligraphic style of the Derge Parkhang. Here, less experienced woodblock cutters produce initial rough cuts that are finished by senior block cutters. The woodblocks are then proofed and sent out for checking and those with errors are sent to more skilled cutters who drill out the mistakes, and plug and plane the block to text-height, thus repairing the text. Printing is a collaborative activity with many key participants, including a block runner, who transports blocks and primed pages, and a team of two printers who roll ink, place paper, lift, and repeat at a speed that facilitates maximum output. …