The Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty was the golden period of printing in ancient China. The
scale of printing was large, the distibution wide, the types varied and the quality superior. Technoogically, the engraving of printing plates was sophisticated, and colour-printing was invented. Metal movable-type printing was also widely used. The Song typeface (§ºÅé) became more refined.

With regards to government printing, the National Academy (°ê¤lºÊ) at Nanjing was quite large in scale and the types of books printed were more varied than those of the Northern Academy.
A special phenomenon of the Ming Dynasty was the printing of books at the Provincial Commanders' Offices. Many fine publications were also produced by the private-printing industy.

China was the first country in the orld to use colour pocessing printing. During the Ming Dynasty, the method of painting several colours on one plate was developed into the process fo multi-colour printing, and finally into full colour-printing.

[Printing] [The Tang Dynasty] [The Song Dynasty] [The Yuan Dynasty] [The dissemination of printing]