History of Printing Press and its Current Usage - Research Paper Example

Printing in that era involved duplication of images, which were known as cylinder seals and involved trolling an impression of a certain image on tablets that were made up of clay. This was common among the Mesopotamia people who enjoyed civilization as early as 300bc. These people relied on the works of art for their livelihoods. Their works involved beautiful and complex images, which they would sell to trade partners. The use of printing in other countries such as china and Egypt was also practiced whereby they use small stamps to seal their proceeds of large blocks.

In other countries such as India and most counties of Europe, the use of printing involved cloths and was widely practiced before they would turn to printing papers. An example of these countries in Europe was papyrus and Germany. Printing of images in clothes was mostly done using silk. This was practiced up to the seventeenth century.1 The history of printing can be traced back to areas given by in different stages. One of the foremost stages was the use of block printing. This is a technique that involves printing texts, patterns or images and was a common way of printing in Europe and East Asia whereby in Asia it was used on textiles under the influence of the Buddhism.

In Europe, the art of printing was known as woodcut, which was used on paper to cover art team, with the exception of block-ups, which were mainly produced in the fifteenth century. The majority Christian Europe on cloths practiced the use of printing in Europe. This trend was common in the 1300s. They used these printings on cloths for religious purposes. The printings were normally large and elaborate that was used to convey a certain form of information. However, as time passed by, the use of paper became common by the 1400s.

This was because of the ease of portability compared to the small woodcuts where they would paint religious images and cards. The use of paper became popular by the year 1425. The use of these forms of printing became more popular in the mid 1400 century with the use of block books, woodcuts books that incorporated both texts and images. Typing was done on the same block, and was a cheaper alternative to the traditional forms of manuscripts and the books, which were printed using movable types.

The movable type books were involved short heavily illustrated works that were repeated in many different versions of block-books. Some common examples of these printings in Europe were Ares Moriiendi and Biblia Pauperum.2 Printing in that era used various tools, which were made specifically for that purpose. It used stencils, which were used to add color to clothes that would last for a longer time. The use of stencils was ladder on advanced by the Japanese in their use of the Katazome on silk of cloths during a period known as Edo.

The use of this stencils’ in Europe gained momentum in 1450s where they were commonly used to color old master prints that were printed mostly in black and white colors. This technique was mostly common in playing cards that continued to be colored using stencils even though other forms of printing had stopped using that form of printing. The colors used in this stencils was a mostly gotten from plants and flowers such as color green, purple indigo, violet. However, the people would advance further and derive color blue from the same plant extracts.

These tools were mostly used for mass publications since they did not have to be handwritten.3 After the stencils era, printing moved to the movable type