WOODEN BLOCK

PRINTING AND
STENCILING
 WOODEN BLOCK
PRINTING
• INTRODUCTION:
• Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text,
images or patterns
• The idea of using carved wood blocks to print multiple
images on paper probably originated in China. This
invention had an enormous cultural impact on human
civilisation as it played a key roll in the evolution of
communication and thought (Heller 1972).
• Printmaking wood blocks are a minor or unusual forest
product and only wood types with specific characteristics
are used. The type of wood that is used and the angle it is
cut depends on the printing technique (Saff and Sacilotto
1978).
• It was used widely throughout East Asia and originating
in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles
and later paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the
earliest surviving examples from China date to before
220, and from Egypt to the 4th century.[1] Ukiyo-e is the
best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most
European uses of the technique on paper are covered by
the art term woodcut, except for the block-books
produced mainly in the fifteenth century.
• It is the earliest, simplest and slowest of all methods of
textile printing. Block printing by hand is a slow process
it is, however, capable of yielding highly artistic results,
some of which are unobtainable by any other method.
 

Design for a hand

woodblock printed
textile, showing the
complexity of the
blocks used to make
repeating patterns.
Evenlode by
William Morris,
1883
  
Evenlode block-
printed fabric.
 Techniques of Block Printing
• The wood block is prepared as a relief matrix, which means
the areas to show 'white' are cut away with a knife, chisel, or
sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in 'black'
at the original surface level.
• The block was cut along the grain of the wood. It is only
necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even
contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print.
• The content would of course print "in reverse" or mirror-
image, a further complication when text was involved. The art
of carving the woodcut is technically known as xylography,
though the term is rarely used in English.
• For colour printing, multiple blocks are used,
each for one colour, although overprinting two
colours may produce further colours on the print.
Multiple colours can be printed by keying the
paper to a frame around the woodblocks.
• Simple yet striking
20th century Indian
printed cloth.
There are a number of processes
of block Printing
  Direct Block Printing
• In this technique, the cotton or silk cloth is first bleached. Then the fabric is
dyed, unless a light background is desired. Thereafter, the fabric is printed
using carved blocks, first the outline blocks, then the ones to fill color.

  Resist Printing
 
• In the resist technique, areas that are to be protected from
the dye are covered with a mixture of clay and resin. The
dyed fabric is then washed. The dye spreads into the
protected areas through cracks, producing a rippled effect.
Block prints are then used to create further designs.
 Discharge Printing

• In this technique, the fabric is dyed. Then, a

chemical is used to remove the dye from the
portions that are to have designs in a different
color. These portions are then treated, so they
may be re-colored.
Stamps carved from calabash shell
for printing adincra cloth
 PROCESS
• This process, though considered by some to be the most
artistic, is the earliest, simplest and slowest of all methods
of printing.
• In this process, a design is drawn upon, or transferred to, a
prepared wooden block. A separate block is required for
each distinct color in the design.
• A block cutter carves out the wood around the heavier
masses first, leaving the finer and more delicate work until
the last so as to avoid any risk of injuring it during the
cutting of the coarser parts. When finished, the block
presents the appearance of flat relief carving, with the
design standing out.
• Fine details are very difficult to cut in wood, and, even
when successfully cut, wear down very rapidly or
break off in printing. They are therefore almost
invariably built up in strips of brass or copper, bent to
shape and driven edgewise into the flat surface of the
block. This method is known as coppering.
• To print the design on the fabric, the printer applies
color to the block and presses it firmly and steadily on
the cloth, ensuring a good impression by striking it
smartly on the back with a wooden mallet.
• The second impression is made in the same way, the printer taking
care to see that it fits exactly to the first, a point which he can make
sure of by means of the pins with which the blocks are provided at
each corner and which are arranged in such a way that when those
at the right side or at the top of the block fall upon those at the left
side or the bottom of the previous impression the two printings join
up exactly and continue the pattern without a break.
• Each succeeding impression is made in precisely the same manner
until the length of cloth is fully printed. When this is done it is
wound over the drying rollers, thus bringing forward a fresh length
to be treated similarly.
• If the pattern contains several colors the cloth is
usually first printed throughout with one, then
dried, and printed with the second, the same
operations being repeated until all the colors’ are
printed.
• Block printing by hand is a slow process it is,
however, capable of yielding highly artistic
results, some of which are unobtainable by any
other method.
• Design for a hand
woodblock printed
textile, showing the
complexity of the
blocks used to make
repeating patterns in
the later 19th
century. Tulip and
Willow by William
Morris, 1873.
 The history
• Wood blocks have been used for printing for at least two
thousand years and their earliest application was probably for
designs on textiles in China, India and Egypt.
• The Chinese invention of Woodblock printing, at some point
before the first dated book in 868 (the Diamond Sutra),
produced the world's first print culture. According to
A. Hyatt Mayor, curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
"it was the Chinese who really discovered the means of
communication that was to dominate until our age."[
• Woodblock printing was better suited to Chinese characters
than movable type, which the Chinese also invented, but which
did not replace woodblock printing.
• Western printing presses, although introduced in the
16th century, was not widely used in China until the
19th century. China, along with Korea, was one of the
last countries to adopt them.
• Woodblock printing for textiles, on the other hand,
preceded text printing by centuries in all cultures, and
is first found in China at around 220, then Egypt in the
4th century,and reached Europe by the 14th century or
before, via the Islamic world, and by around 1400 was
being used on paper for old master prints and
playing cards.
• In another analysis Hyatt Mayor states that "a
little before 1400 Europeans had enough paper to
begin making holy images and playing cards in
woodcut. They need not have learned woodcut
from the Chinese, because they had been using
woodblocks for about 1,000 years to stamp
designs on linen."
• Printing in China was further advanced by the
11th century, as it was written by the
Song Dynasty scientist and statesman Shen Kuo
(1031-1095) that the common artisan Bi Sheng
(990-1051) invented ceramic movable type
printing.
• Then there were those such as Wang Zhen (fl. 1290-1333)
and Hua Sui (1439-1513), the former of whom invented
wooden movable type printing in China,the latter of
whom invented metal movable type printing in China.
• Movable type printing was a tedious process if one were
to assemble thousands of individual characters for the
printing of simply one or a few books, but if used for
printing thousands of books, the process was efficient
and rapid enough to be successful and highly employed.
• Indeed, there were many cities in China where movable
type printing, in wooden and metal form, was adopted by
the enterprises of wealthy local families or large private
industries.
• The Qing Dynasty court sponsored enormous printing projects using
woodblock movable type printing during the 18th century. Although
superseded by western printing techniques, woodblock movable type
printing remains in use in isolated communities in China.
• The art of wood block printing on textiles was also practiced in
Europe during the early Middle Ages and reached a climax of
perfection in eighteenth century France and England (Bramwell
1982).
• One of the first forms of wood block printing done on paper
(otherwise known as block book printing) was carried out by
Buddhists to transcribe and disseminate the text and images of
Buddhist deities
• Printing with the same block of wood offered a way to
mass-produce, in scroll form, the sacred words and
images (Heller 1972).
• One of the earliest known Chinese woodcuts of text and
image is the 17-foot long Diamond Sutra, which was
discovered in a walled-up cave in 1907 and dates from
868 A.D.
• The assured style and beauty of this wood block print
suggests that in China wood block printing must have
already undergone a long period of maturation, many
centuries before western woodcuts developed (Heller
1972).
• One of the oldest surviving records of European wood
block printing is a fragment of a block depicting a
Crucifixion. This block is known as the Bois Protat and
is dated to 1380 (~500 years after the oldest known
Chinese wood block print) (Heller 1972).
• At the beginning of the fifteenth century, woodcuts
were commonly used to provide cheap illustrations of
religious subjects. Religious texts were also cut into the
same block and the resulting prints were hand water
coloured. Later that century woodcuts were beginning
to appear as illustrations alongside type in Germany,
the Netherlands and Austria.
• A number of great artists such as Durer, Holbein and
Cranach also created woodcuts with the assistance of
professional cutters (Bramwell 1982).
• During the eighteenth century boxwood blocks were used
for printing with fast running printing presses. This was
because the resilience of the material was ideally suited
to the printing presses and the fine grain made the wood
ideal for fine and detailed work.
• In the nineteenth century woodblocks were mainly used
for cheap commercial illustrations of all kinds (Bramwell
1982) and today is enjoying a resurgence of interest
among visual artists and letterpress printers alike.
 
• Yuan Dynasty woodblock edition of a Chinese play
  Development of block
printing
 
• The use of round "cylinder seals" for rolling an
impress onto clay tablets goes back to early
Mesopotamian civilization before 3,000 BC, where
they are the commonest works of art to survive,
and feature complex and beautiful images.
• In both China and Egypt, the use of small stamps
for seals preceded the use of larger blocks. In
Egypt, Europe, and India, the printing of cloth
certainly preceded the printing of paper or
papyrus; this was probably also the case in China.
• The process is essentially the same—in Europe special
presentation impressions of prints were often printed
on silk until at least the seventeenth century.
• The earliest woodblock printed fragments to survive
are from China and are of silk printed with flowers in
three colors from the Han dynasty (before AD 220 ).
• The earliest Egyptian printed cloth dates from the 4th
century.[1] But the dry conditions in Egypt are
exceptionally good for preserving fabric compared to,
for example, India.
• It is clear that woodblock printing developed in Asia
several centuries before Europe.
• The Chinese and Koreans were the first to use the process to
print solid text, and equally that, much later, in Europe the
printing of images on cloth developed into the printing of
images on paper (woodcuts).
• It is also now established that the use in Europe of the same
process to print substantial amounts of text together with
images in block-books only came after the development of
movable type in the 1450s.
• It is not clear if the Egyptian printing of cloth was learned
from China, or elsewhere, or developed separately.
• Block printing, called tarsh in Arabic was developed in
Arabic Egypt during the 9th-10th centuries, mostly for
prayers and amulets. It is unclear whether the print blocks
were made from metal or wood or other materials.
• This technique, however, appears to have had
very little influence outside of the Muslim world.
Though Europe adopted woodblock printing from
the Muslim world, initially for fabric, the
technique of metal block printing was also
unknown in Europe.
• Block printing later went out of use in Islamic
Central Asia after movable type printing was
introduced from China
• Colored woodcut
Buddha, 10th
century, China
• In China, an alternative to woodblock printing was a system of
reprography since the Han Dynasty using carved stone steles to
reproduce pages of text
• In India the main importance of the technique has always been
as a method of printing textiles, which has been a large industry
for centuries.
• Large quantities of printed Indian silk and cotton were exported
to Europe throughout the Modern Period.
• The three necessary components for woodblock printing are the
wood block, which carries the design cut in relief; dye or ink,
which had been widely used in the ancient world; and either
cloth or paper, which was first developed in China, around the
3rd or 2nd century BC. Woodblock printing on papyrus seems
never to have been practised, although it would be possible.
• Because Chinese has a character set running into the thousands,
woodblock printing suits it better than movable type to the extent
that characters only need to be created as they occur in the text.
Although the Chinese had invented a form of movable type with
baked clay in the 11th century, and metal movable type was
introduced in Korea in the 13th century, woodblocks continued to
be preferred owing to the formidable challenges of typesetting
Chinese text with its 40,000 or more characters.
• Also, the objective of printing in the East may have been more
focused on standardization of ritual text (such as the Buddhist
canon Tripitaka, requiring 130,000 woodblocks), and the purity of
validated woodblocks could be maintained for centuries.
• When there was a need for the reproduction of a text, the
original block could simply be brought out again, while
moveable type necessitated error-prone composition of distinct
"editions".
• In China, Korea, and Japan, the state involved itself in printing
at a relatively early stage; initially only the government had the
resources to finance the carving of the blocks for long works.
• The difference between East Asian woodblock printing and the
Western printing press had major implications for the
development of book culture and book markets in East Asia
and Europe.
EARLY BOOKS
• The intricate frontispiece of the
Diamond Sutra from
Tang Dynasty China, the
world's earliest dated printed
book, AD 868 (British Museum)
• Woodblock printing in China is
strongly associated with
Buddhism, which encouraged
the spread of charms and
sutras.
• In the Tang Dynasty, a Chinese
writer named Fenzhi first
mentioned in his book "Yuan
Xian San Ji" that the
woodblock was used to print
Buddhist scriptures during the
Zhenguan years (AD 627~649).
• The oldest known Chinese surviving printed work is a
woodblock-printed Buddhist scripture of Wu Zetian period
(AD 684~705); discovered in Turfan, Xinjiang province, China
in 1906, it is now stored in a calligraphy museum in Tokyo,
Japan.
• A woodblock print of the Dharani sutra dated between AD 704
and 751 was found at Bulguksa, South Korea in 1966.
• Its Buddhist text was printed on a mulberry paper scroll 8 cm
wide and 630 cm long in the early Korean Kingdom of Unified
Silla.
• Another version of the Dharani sutra, printed in Japan around
AD 770, is also frequently cited as an example of early printing.
One million copies of the sutra, along with other prayers, were
ordered
• to be produced by Empress Shōtoku. As each copy was then
stored in a tiny wooden pagoda, the copies are together
known as the Hyakumantō Darani ( 百万塔陀羅尼 ,
"1,000,000 towers/pagodas Darani").
• The world's earliest dated (AD 868) printed book is a Chinese
scroll about sixteen feet long and containing the text of the
Diamond Sutra. It was found in 1907 by the archaeologist Sir
Marc Aurel Stein in Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, and is now
in the British Museum.
• The book displays a great maturity of design and layout and
speaks of a considerable ancestry for woodblock printing.
• The colophon, at the
inner end, reads:
Reverently [caused to
be] made for universal
free distribution by
Wang Jie on behalf of
his two parents on the
13th of the 4th moon of
the 9th year of Xiantong
[i.e. 11 May, AD 868 ].
• Finely crafted books—like the Bencao (materia medica)
shown here—were produced in China as early as the ninth
century.[8]
• In late 10th century China the complete Buddhist canon
Tripitaka of 130,000 pages was printed with blocks, which
took between 1080 and 1102, and many other very long
works were printed.
• Early books were on scrolls, but other book formats were
developed. First came the Jingzhe zhuang or "sutra
binding", a scroll folded concertina-wise, which avoided the
need to unroll half a scroll to see a passage in the middle.
• About AD 1000 "butterfly binding" was developed; two pages
were printed on a sheet, which was then folded inwards. The
sheets were then pasted together at the fold to make a codex
with alternate openings of printed and blank pairs of pages.
• In the fourteenth century the folding was reversed outwards to
give continuous printed pages, each backed by a blank hidden
page. Later the bindings were sewn rather than pasted.
• Only relatively small volumes (juan) were bound up, and
several of these would be enclosed in a cover called a tao, with
wooden boards at front and back, and loops and pegs to close
up the book when not in use.
 Woodblock printing in Eurasia
• The technique is found through East and Central Asia, and in
the Byzantine world for cloth, and by AD 1000 examples of
woodblock printing on paper appear in Islamic Egypt.
• Printing onto cloth had spread much earlier, and was
common in Europe by 1300.
• Woodblock printing on paper of images only began in Europe
around 1400, almost as soon as paper became available, and
the print in woodcut, later joined by engraving, quickly
became an important cultural tradition for popular religious
works, as well as playing cards and other uses.[2]
• Many early Chinese examples, such as the Diamond Sutra
(above) contain images, mostly Buddhist, that are often
elaborate.
• Later, some notable artists designed
woodblock images for books, but the
separate artistic print did not develop in
China as it did in Europe and Japan. Apart
from devotional images, mainly Buddhist,
few "single-leaf" Chinese prints were made
until the nineteenth century.
 
• Block-books in fifteenth
century Europe
• Three episodes from a block-book Biblia Pauperum
illustrating typological correspondences between the Old
and New Testaments: Eve and the serpent, the
Annunciation, Gideon's miracle
• Block-books, where both text and images are cut on blocks,
appeared in Europe in the 1460s as a cheaper alternative to
books printed by movable type.[9] A woodcut is an image,
perhaps with a title, cut in a single block and used as a book
illustration with adjacent text printed using movable type.
The only example of the blockbook form that contains no
images is the school textbook Latin grammar of Donatus.
• The most famous block-books are the Speculum Humanae
Salvationis and the Ars moriendi, though in this the images
and text are on different pages, but all block-cut. The Biblia
pauperum, a Biblical picture-book, was the next most
common title, and the great majority of block-books were
popular devotional works. All block-books are fairly short
at less than fifty pages. While in Europe movable metal
type soon became cheap enough to replace woodblock
printing for the reproduction of text, woodcuts remained a
major way to reproduce images in illustrated works of
early modern European printing. See old master print.
• Most block-books before about 1480 were printed on
only one side of the paper — if they were printed by
rubbing it would be difficult to print on both sides
without damaging the first one to be printed. Many
were printed with two pages per sheet, producing a
book with opening of two printed pages, followed by
openings with two blank pages (as earlier in China).
The blank pages were then glued together to produce
a book looking like a type-printed one. Where both
sides of a sheet have been printed, it is presumed a
printing-press was used.
•  
COLORS
• Large Waterfall by Hiroshige, a ukiyo-e artist
• The earliest woodblock printing known is in colour—Chinese silk
from the Han Dynasty printed in three colours.[3]
• On paper, European woodcut prints with coloured blocks were
invented in Germany in 1508 and are known as
chiaroscuro woodcuts.
• Colour is very common in Asian woodblock printing on paper; in
China the first known example is a Diamond sutra of 1341, printed
in black and red at the Zifu Temple in modern day Hubei province.
• The earliest dated book printed in more than 2 colours is Chengshi
moyuan, a book on
• ink-cakes printed in 1606 and the technique reached its height
in books on art published in the first half of the seventeenth
century.
• Notable examples are the Treatise on the Paintings and Writings of
the Ten Bamboo Studio of 1633, and the Mustard Seed Garden
Painting Manual published in 1679 and 1701.
• In Japan, a multi-colour technique, called nishiki-e ("brocade
pictures"), spread more widely, and was used for prints, from the
1760s on. Japanese woodcut became a major artistic form, although
at the time it was accorded a much lower status than painting.
• In both Europe and Japan, book illustrations were normally printed
in black ink only, and colour reserved for individual artistic prints.
In China, the reverse was true, and colour printing was used mainly
in books on art and erotica.
• Main article: Woodblock printing in Japan
• The earliest known woodblock printing dates from 764-
770, when an Empress commissioned one million small
wooden pagodas containing short printed scrolls
(typically 6 x 45 cm) to be distributed to temples.
• Apart from the production of Buddhist texts, which
became widespread from the eleventh century in Japan,
the process was only adopted in Japan for secular
books surprisingly late, and a Chinese-Japanese
dictionary of 1590 is the earliest known example.

JAPAN
• Though the Jesuits operated a movable type printing-press
in Nagasaki, printing equipment brought back by
Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army from Korea in 1593 had far
greater influence on the development of the medium. Four
years later, Tokugawa Ieyasu, even before becoming
shogun, effected the creation of the first native movable
type,using wooden type-pieces rather than metal. He
oversaw the creation of 100,000 type-pieces, which were
used to print a number of political and historical texts.
• An edition of the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598,
using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order
of Emperor Go-Yōzei.
• This document is the oldest work of Japanese moveable
type printing extant today. Despite the appeal of
moveable type, however, it was soon decided that the
running script style of Japanese writings would be
better reproduced using woodblocks, and so woodblocks
were once more adopted; by 1640 they were once again
being used for nearly all purposes
• It quickly gained popularity among artists of ukiyo-e,
and was used to produce small, cheap, art prints as well
as books. Japan began to see something of literary mass
production.
• The content of these books varied widely, including
travel guides, advice manuals, kibyōshi (satirical
novels), sharebon (books on urban culture), art books,
and play scripts for the jōruri (puppet) theatre. Often,
within a certain genre, such as the jōruri theatre scripts,
a particular style of writing would come to be the
• standard for that genre; in other words, one
person's personal calligraphic style was adopted as
the standard style for printing plays.
 
 Further development of
woodblock printing in East Asia
• Woodblock printing, Sera Monastery, Tibet. The distinctive
shape of the pages goes back to Palm leaf manuscripts in
ancient Buddhist India
• In East Asia, woodblock printing proved to be more enduring
than in Europe, continuing well into the 19th century as the
major form of printing texts, especially in China, even after
the introduction of the European printing press.
• Jesuits stationed in China in the 16th and 17th centuries
indeed preferred to use woodblocks for their own publishing
projects,noting how inexpensive and convenient it was.
• Only with the introduction of more mechanized
printing methods from the West in the 19th century
did printing in East Asia move towards metal
moveable type and the printing press
• In countries using Arabic, Turkish and similar
scripts, works, especially the Qu'ran were
sometimes printed by lithography in the nineteenth
century, as the links between the characters require
compromises when movable type is used which were
considered inappropriate for sacred texts.
 Spread and Decline of
Woodblock Printing
• The spread of woodblock printing beyond China is
illustrative of this technology’s appeal. First, the
technique spread through East and Central Asia, and
by 1000 A.D. examples of woodblock printing appear in
Islamic Egypt, and by the late Middle Ages woodblock
printing has become an important force in Europe.
• While in Europe moveable metal type would soon
replace woodblock printing for the reproduction of text,
woodblock printing remained a major way to
reproduce images in illustrated works of early modern
European printing.
• In East Asia, woodblock printing proved to be more
enduring, continuing well into the 19th century as the major
form of printing, especially in China, even after the
introduction of the Gutenberg printing press.
• Jesuits stationed in China in the 16th and 17th centuries
indeed preferred to use woodblocks for their own publishing
projects, noting how inexpensive and convenient it was.
• Only with the introduction of more mechanized printing
methods from the West in the 19th century did printing in
East Asia move towards metal moveable type and the
printing press.
 Stencilling

 
Introduction: • Visual diagram of a
basic stencil.
• The art of stenciling is very old. It has been applied to the
decoration of textile fabrics from time immemorial by the
Japanese, and, of late years, has found increasing employment in
Europe for certain classes of decorative work on woven goods for
furnishing purposes.
• The pattern is cut out of a sheet of stout paper or thin metal with
a sharp-pointed knife, the uncut portions representing the part
that is to be reserved or left uncoloured.
• The sheet is now laid on the material to be decorated and colour
is brushed through its interstices.
• It is obvious that with suitable planning an all over pattern may
be just as easily produced by this process as by hand or machine
printing, and that moreover, if several plates are used, as many
colors plates may be introduced into it.
• The peculiarity of stenciled patterns is that they have to be
held together by ties, that is to say, certain parts of them
have to be left uncut, so as to connect them with each other,
and prevent them from falling apart in separate pieces.
• For instance, a complete circle cannot be cut without its
center dropping out, and, consequently, its outline has to be
interrupted at convenient points by ties or uncut portions.
Similarly with other objects.
• The necessity for ties exercises great influence on the design,
and in the hands of a designer of indifferent ability they
may be very unsightly.
• On the other hand, a capable man utilizes them to
supply the drawing, and when thus treated they form an
integral part of the pattern and enhance its artistic
value whilst complying with the conditions and the
process.
• For single-colour work a stenciling machine was
patented in 1894 by S. H. Sharp. It consists of an
endless stencil plate of thin sheet steel that passes
continuously over a revolving cast iron cylinder.
Between the two the cloth to be ornamented passes and
the colour is forced on to it, through the holes in the
stencil, by mechanical means.
 
• Deerfield society of blue
and white needle work
table square
“pomegranates”.1900-
16 appliqué and
embroidery on
linen.15*15 ½
.memorial hall museum
collection. Deerfield
massachusetts.
Process of stenciling

A woman stenciling
and applying color
color to a design.
 History of Stencils
• Stenciling has re-emerged as a favored decorative
technique and interior designers, architects, artisans and
professional decorative painters are choosing stenciled
finishes as a beautiful, versatile and unique option for
decorative design on walls, floors, ceilings, furniture,
textiles and cabinetry.
• The word stencil comes from the French word 'pochoir'.
Stencil technique used in visual art is still referred to as
'pochoir. A stencil is a template which is used repeatedly
to paint or draw patterns, shapes, letters or symbols.
Stencils are formed by removing sections from the
template material in the form of a letter or a design.
• This creates essentially a 'negative image'. The
template can then be used to create impressions of the
stenciled image by applying pigment on the surface of
the template and through the removed sections,
leaving a reproduction of the stencil on the underlying
surface. Sections of the remaining template which are
isolated inside removed parts of the image are called
'islands'. All islands must be connected to other parts
of the template with 'bridges' which are additional
strips or sections of narrow template material which
are not removed.
Stencils: An Ancient Tradition
• Hand print painting
from Chauvet Cave,
France.
• Stenciling has a long and rich history. The art of
stenciling has existed since the Upper Paleolithic
era, approximately 40,000-10,000 years ago, with
the earliest known example of "stencil" use dated
to 32,000 years ago. Painted wall art reached high
artistry during this period and some of the best
known uses of stencils are found in cave paintings
in Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain. A
common motif in cave paintings was hand
tracings. Hands were placed on rock walls and the
artist would spray pigment from his mouth
around the outline of his hand. Primitive
blowpipes made from hollowed-out reeds and
bones may also have been used to dispense
pigments
• Tonga Bark Cloth
• Early South Sea islanders also used stencils. In Fiji,
banana and bamboo leaves were used as stencil
material. Perforated patterns were cut into the leaves
and a vegetable dye was pressed through the holes onto
'tapa', or bark cloth. Stenciled geometric borders were
a favored design for clothing and textiles.
• In Indonesia stenciling was used in combination with
'batik'. Batik is a form of pattern design which uses wax
to shield parts of the cloth from the dyeing process.
• In Ancient Egypt stencils were used for the decoration
of tombs. Artists stenciled hieroglyphs, figures and
animals onto tomb walls.
• The resulting images were then incised around the
outer edges of the design by sculptors to make a
low relief, which would then be plastered and
painted
• Strong vibrant colors such as red oxide and yellow
ochre were characteristically used in tomb decoration.
• Ancient Greeks and Romans found that the simple
geometric, linear, and silhouetted forms they favored
were ideal for stenciling. The Greeks outlined their
mosaic designs with stencils; the Pompeiians used
stencils to decorate their astonishing interior wall
surfaces; the Romans used stencils to create lettered
signboards offering directions to the Colisseum for the
general public. Both Greeks and Romans used stencils
as a decorative tool for painting murals..
• Elsewhere in Europe, it is known that Theodoric
(475-526 A.D.), the king of the Ostrogoths, used a
stencil made from gold ingot to sign his name to
official documents
 The Asian Tradition of Fine
Stencil Making
• The ancient Chinese had also developed their own
stencil technique using mulberry fibers to a make a type
of 'paper' for stencil templates. Many thin layers of
fibers were placed on top of each other, then pressed
together and varnished for stability. The early Chinese
used stencils mainly for the decoration of cloth.
• With the invention of paper in 105 A.D., the Chinese
turned to this new medium and developed cut paper
stencils. Now, 50-60 thin layers of paper could be cut at
one time.
• The beginning of limited mass production of
stenciled images began during the Six Dynasties
period (500-600 A.D.) when the Chinese marketed
images of the Buddha.
• They also used paper stencils to design embroidery
patterns. The template was laid upon cloth and marked
and the sewer then had a pattern to follow for the
design. Because cuts on paper could be made finer and
more delicate than on mulberry bark cloth, complicated
patterns using paper stencils could now be developed
for the intricate cloth decoration and porcelain design
that was favored by the fashionable and affluent.
• In Japan stenciling had been an art form for over 1,000
years. Traditionally, the stencil-making process involved
curing sheets of mulberry bark in persimmon juice. The
cured sheets were stacked and cut with a sharp curved
blade.
•An artisan could cut several sheets at a time, ensuring
identical patterns on all of them. With the advent of paper,
the Japanese turned also to paper-cut stencils and
developed their own system of stencil cutting using
"washi" paper.

• Katagami Stencil cut

from washi paper
• Katagami Stencil cut from washi paper.
• The Japanese had also developed and perfected a dye-
resist technique for patterning and coloring cloth using
stencils and rice paste. 'Katagami' is the Japanese art of
making paper stencils for kimono printing.
• Multiple layers of thin washi paper were bonded
together with a glue extracted from the persimmon,
which make a strong, flexible brown-colored paper.
• The paper was cut with a variety of knives and punches.
The resulting designs were intricate and very fragile.
For kimono printing the stencils were stabilized by
attaching them to a fine silk net.
•In the past, human hair had been used instead of silk
but silk proved to be finer and less likely to warp. A
stencil was generally not used for more than one
kimono, although multiple stencils could be cut at a time.

• Printed Katagami
Stencil
• When the Japanese expanded and developed the use of
silk threads as 'bridges" the most delicate of patterns
could be realized.
• The threads allowed isolated parts of the stencil to stay
attached to the main template and when pigment was
applied over the stencil, the silk 'lines' left after
removing the stencil had all but disappeared.
• The finest of details and most intricate of patterns were
achieved during this period of stencil design. The
silkscreening process has its origins in katagami, with
its fine network of silk threads.
• Katazome dye-resist
print using Katagami
stencils
• For printing, the Japanese used a dye-resist method
using a rice and flour paste pressed through a stencil.
• This process was called 'katazome' and consisted of
applying the paste through a stencil using a brush or
tool such as a palette knife.
• Pigment was added by hand painting, immersion or
both. Where the paste mixture covered and permeated
the cloth, dye applied later would not penetrate.
• By re-aligning a stencil multiple times and re-applying
rice paste each time the stencil was moved, large areas
of fabric could be patterned. It was a painstaking and
time-consuming process, but the beauty and singularity
of kimono design using katagami and katazome is
evident still today.
• Katazome
• Katazome provided a more economical way for
overall patterns similar to expensive woven
brocades to be achieved on cotton or linen. Both
katazome and katagami developed into art forms
of their own. Besides cloth design for apparel,
during the Kamokura period stenciled designs
were used on the leather armor of Samurai and
on the leather harnesses and trappings of their
horses.
Stencil Art During the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance
• From China and Japan the art and knowledge of
stenciling spread along the trade routes to the
Middle East, eventually reaching Turkey by the
8th century. By the Middle Ages the art of
stenciling had reached Europe where conquests,
crusades and pilgrimages dispersed this
knowledge from the east to Germany, Italy,
France, Spain and England.
• MANUSCRIPT
• In Italy, France, and Spain stencils were used in
combination with wood block printing to
illuminate manuscripts, print religious tracts and
images, and to decorate religious paintings,
murals and other monastic art. In Germany, Pope
Boniface IX (1389-1404) had extended the grant
of indulgences to locations other than just Rome,
such as Munich and Cologne. The increase of
pilgrims grew as there were now more sites
available to them to make their pilgrimages
• The distances were shorter and thus less costly.
Gaining remission for their sins was the object of a
pilgrimage and as the number of travelers increased,
so did the demand for religious tracts and pictures.
Mass production of these 'art' pieces were offered at
shrines where thousands of people gathered. Stencils
were used to apply colors onto wood block printed
images. The Germans even developed a saying at the
time: "Alle zwolf Apostle auf einen streich machen'
(to paint all the apostles at one stroke).
• cards and the simple shapes lent themselves easily
to stenciling for limited mass production.In
France, stencils were used to make playing cards.
Though other countries had developed their own
sets of card 'suits', the suits developed in France
in the Middle Ages are the ones we know and use
today. The cards appeared in the 1480's and were
simple, one-color shapes designated each suit.
There was no other decoration at that time on the
 Panel of Domino Sheets 1742-43

Stenciling in the 17th and 18th

Centuries
• With the advent of the printing press in 1439 in
Germany, stencils became marketed for the first time on
a large scale. Pattern books circulated throughout
Europe. By the 17th-century stencil patterns were used
on veneers for furniture design as well as for textile
decoration. At this time, cloth had traditionally been
used to cover the interior walls of affluent homes in
France. In Rouen, French stencil makers had developed
a system of stenciling patterns on heavy sheets of paper
which came only in lengths of 1-1.25 metres (3-4 feet) by
46 centimeters (18 inches) width. These segments of
paper were called 'dominoes' and were the forerunner
of wallpaper.
• The dominoes were stenciled first and then
adhered to the wall. Hand-stenciled 'wallpapers'
began to appear in the finest houses in France and
then the rest of Europe. Stencils were also used for
'flocking' walls.
• A stencil was cut and placed on the wall and a glue
was applied through the stencil. Wool flock or
particles were adhered to the wall. The effect was
similar to embroidery or applique and provided
texture and warmth to cold flat walls.
Early American Stencil Art in
the 18th and 19th-Centuries
• By the 18th century the art of stenciling had reached the
New World. Stenciled floors predated stenciled walls in
early American homes, however. This fashion of painting
floors was adopted immediately by the most affluent and
from there the technique spread into the surrounding rural
homes of countryside hamlets. A 1739 booklet from
England exhibited geometric and floral floor stencil
patterns popular at that time in Europe. Floor stenciling
was done to simulate carpet on bare floors, or to imitate
more costly inlaid woods. A varnish was used to seal the
painted floor and over time the varnish mellowed to a rich
gold and brown patina.
• This caused the colors underneath (usually black, red, green,
and white) to appear as fine inlaid or variegated woods set
characteristically in a background of yellow ochre, grey,
Indian red, and green. The combination most often used was
lamp black over pumpkin pine, either natural or painted
yellow ochre.
• Stenciled floorcloths were also a popular decorative choice of
the time. During the Clipper Ship era (1810-1870), the canvas
from ripped sails began to be used as floor cloths. As floor
cloths were transportable, they provided an economical and
ideal medium on which to stencil pattern.
• In addition to walls and floors, Americans stenciled
bedspreads, tablecloths, furniture and household articles such
as boxes, trunks, and trays. The material used to cut stencils
from included oiled heavy paper, tin, stiffened linen, and
sometimes leather.
• As interiors of American homes evolved from rough-hewn
timber to plaster walls a need arose to decorate these plain
surfaces. Settlers who had the means started to stencil directly
on the walls instead of using more expensive dominos imported
from Europe. At that time stencil patterns were inspired by
printed wallpapers which had by then become popular in
Europe and supplanted stenciled walls to some degree.
American stencil patterns were larger and much simpler than
their printed counterparts and direct stenciling on surfaces
was a more economical option than the costly printed
wallpapers and hand painted furniture imported from Europe.
• The earliest recorded date of a stencil used in America was
1778 in a home in New England. Many stencil artisans at that
time originated from England and the German Palatinate and
they brought their own cultural sensibilities to the designs they
painted. They were professional journeymen/itinerants who
traveled from town to town, singly or in pairs, to seek work in
exchange for room and board or a small wage. The artisan
carried with him a supply of stencils cut from thick paper, dry
pigments, a short brush or two, a few measuring tools, a
builder's cord, and a piece of chalk. The patron would supply
sour milk as the medium in which to mix the pigments. These
journeymen shared their designs as different stencil styles
painted in the same house have been found in individual houses
in New England. Colors used in early American stenciling were
strong as homes were often quite dark.
Moses Eaton
• Probably the best known and best documented stencil
artist of the 18th and early 19th-century was Moses
Eaton. Moses Eaton moved from Needham,
Massachusetts to Hancock, New Hampshire in 1792.
In 1796 his son, Moses, Jr., was born. Moses, Jr., who
would later become a stencil artist as well, most likely
apprenticing to his father before going out on his
own. Stencil patterns dating from 1800-1840 were
found along with some of Eaton's tools in the attic of
his house after he had died. Both artisans contributed
to the 'folk art' style that was developing in America.
• Moses Eaton used current printed wallpaper designs of
the day as a guide for placement of motifs and patterns
but before long his stenciling artistry had developed its
own unique characteristics. Though simpler and less
intricate than printed wallpaper, American stencil
patterns became an art form in their own right. Motifs
were popular; the swag and pendant known as the Liberty
Bell was a particularly patriotic emblem of post-
revolutionary America; flower baskets represented
friendship; the oak leaf, strength and loyalty; the willow,
everlasting life; and the pineapple, hospitality.
• Hearts symbolized love and happiness and often formed
part of the decor of a homestead for a new bride. Color
was vibrant and eclectic; red and green were common
stencil colors and were used over walls colored in
raspberry pink, salmon, dove grey, bright yellow, and
yellow ochre. Stenciling, though less expensive than
printed wallpaper, was considered to be more personal and
stylish. Many homes in New England still have extant
examples of early American stencil art. There are 68
known stencil patterns attributed to Moses Eaton which
are still used today in American homes
• During the Federal period (1783-1820), stencils achieved
great popularity. At that time it was considered
fashionable to define the outline or edges of patterns or
shapes, whether it be a piece of furniture or an
architectural element. Braid, tape, and other edgings on
clothing, borders on floors, carpets, fabric, and window
hangings, edge motifs on silver or border patterns on
china were used to emphasize the outlines of the piece.
Stencils were also used to outline architectural features
and elements, such as mantels, doors, walls, and chair
rails with decorative stylized borders.
• Furniture makers in America had also made use of
stencils. Few early Americans could afford gilded,
carved, and brass-mounted furniture imported from
Europe. Cabinet makers discovered a method that
simulated European designs; they rubbed multi-
colored bronze powders through a stencil onto a tacky
varnished surface. They were able to shade the
powders around the edges of the stencil and thus to
achieve depth and tone, add dimension, and soften the
image of the design. This was a practical application
of stencils which produced many elegant designs.
Theorem Painting
• Also in the 1800's a new vogue for stenciling reached
academies and boarding schools where young girls were
taught the art of 'theorem' painting. Theorem painting was
usually a still life using multiple overlays of stencils and
hand painting techniques. A stencil of a still life (usually fruit
or flowers) was placed on fabric (usually velvet). The motif
was painted and another overlay (perhaps leaves) was placed
next to or overlapping the already painted motif and colored
as well. With careful shading and placement of overlays a
realistic "painting" could be achieved. The finished work
was matted and framed and hung on the wall in the parlor.
On the whole, the designs were simple and stylized, and
multiple overlays were always used. The advantage to this
process was that there were no 'bridges' or gaps betweent
the overlays.
Stenciling in the Late 19th and
Early 20th-Centuries
• By the late 19th century the Industrial Revolution had
enabled mass production of wallpapers and other
household items. Wallpapers were now available to the
less affluent and began to soar in popularity. Even though
Rudyard Kipling in 1899 had described a 'cozy study' as
one 'decorated with a dado, a stencil, and cretonne
hangings', stencils began to fall out of favor. Louis
Comfort Tiffany and the Arts and Crafts movement kept
stenciling alive but the availability of wallpapers and
printed decorations of all sorts had started to relegate the
art of stenciling to a non-relevant status
• Early film makers were still using stencils to color film
frames. The hand colored painting of frames was a
widely practiced art when color film production was in
its early stages. In 1906, the Pathe company in France
had developed a mechanical method to color frames
using stencils which spread throughout the industry.
• A small surge of interest in stenciling occurred in the
beginning of the 20th century, when stencils were used
for typefaces and other coloring techniques. Stencil-like
letters were used to express a utilitarian aesthetic or a
vernacular sensibility. Simple, spare, geometric, and
stylized forms were the style choices for advertising, art
books, typefaces, and posters
• French publishers, influenced by Japanese printed
textiles, used stencils to provide color separations for
book illustrations. The process was similar to the hand
coloring used 100 years before for theorem painting,
but it differed in its painstaking efforts to reproduce
exactly the nuanced tones of a color in a painting or
image. Art book reproductions of Fauvist painters such
as Derain required cutting separate stencils for every
tint. Some of the best examples of fine printing using
stencils are the reproductions of Pablo Picasso's Ballet
RuPablo which were done in 1920.
• Acer Noir Typeface 1936
• During the Art Deco era of the 1920's and 1930's the use
of stencils reached its last great height until today's
upsurge of interest in stencil design. The french type
foundry firm Deberny et Peignot offered their famous
display typeface named "bifur" in 1929, followed by
"Acier Noir" in 1936. Both typefaces expressed the
spirit and style of the era. That same year Harper's
Bazaar used stencils for the typeface in its logo. As
printing technologies advanced, however, the art and
craft of stenciling became almost obsolete. By the late
1970's stencils were slowly coming back into fashion.
• In reaction to technological improvements which
had supplied customers with a dizzying array of
decorative options for the home, the desire for
more personal, custom-made, and hand-painted
patterns and designs began to resurge, and stencils
today are as popular as they were in the 18th-
century.
 The Art of Stenciling Today:
Rediscovered and Revolutionized
• Stencils today comprise a wealth of historic
precedent and stencil design choices are limitless.
Stencils are now most commonly made from
mylar, a flexible, strong, washable, transparent
film which can be used mutiple times. Whether a
designer is looking for the designs of a stylistic
period or a patterns specific to a certain culture,
whether custom-made or commercial, a stencil is
available or can be custom-cut to specification.
• Stencil design today ranges from stylistic periods such as
the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque, the
Roccoco, the Neoclassical, the Victorian, the Art Nouveau
and Art Deco eras to American styles such as the Arts and
Crafts movement and American folk art design. Patterns
specific to a certain culture are also highly popular at the
turn of the 21st century. From Chinese textiles and pottery
designs, Japanese kimono and paintings, Persian floral
motifs, Indian paisleys, Mughal designs, and Indonesian
geometrics to Turkish and Arabic tessellated tile patterns,
stencil design has reached a new height of artistry and
innovation.
• Stencils are used to decorate walls, ceilings and ceiling
rosettes, floors such as concrete, stone and vinyl, carpets
such as sisal, seagrass, canvas, and low-pile fibers,
architectural elements such as doors, frames, moldings,
staircase treads and risers, columns, pilasters, and
mantelpieces. On soft furnishings, stencils are used on
window fabric treatments, tablecloths, bedspreads,
pillows, and lampshades. Stencils can be used to decorate
furniture in the form of motifs, garlands, swags, wreaths,
and panels, and to adorn household items such as trunks,
trays and boxes.
• The development of new 'finishes' for surfaces combined
with the art of stenciling has given fresh and innovative
choices to architects and designers.
• New innovations in surface treatment include textured
finishes such as suede, stone, sand, reptile hide, stucco,
leather, and slubbed silk; sheened finishes such as metallic
and pearlescent glazes, paints and plasters; matte finishes
such as lime paint washes and milk paint; and raised
finishes using plasters and stuccos. Whether using a stencil
over a surface already prepared with one of these finishes
with an analagous or complimentary medium, or using
these mediums themselves with which to stencil on a simple
glazed wall, new and exquisite surface design is accessible,
affordable, and is still, as it was 32,000 years ago, unique.
The beauty and individuality of a custom made stencil is a
vibrant and fresh option for fine interior decoration and as
in the fine homes in centuries past, stenciling still offers the
quality of fine hand-painting in the artistry of a skilled
artisan.
 The Future of Stenciling
As the art form continues to evolve, stencil designers
such as Royal Design Studio's founder Melanie Royals,
have led the way to developing new techniques,
applications, and artistic possibilities for stencil
decoration: free-form stenciling, embossed surfaces,
incorporating decorative and textured finishes.
Today's Professionally-Minded Decorators are presented
with an never-ending variety of choices for creating
unique and artistic environments by using a design tool
that has been incorporated into the fabric of decorative
arts for thousands of years: the ever-evolving stencil.