Hua Sui - Process and Methods

Process and Methods

For creating movable type font characters, the Chinese employed both methods of either casting moulds or individually engraving characters. Casting was favored over the long and laborious process of cutting individual characters of bronze, which may have been a simple task with the material of wood, but not as economically feasible with metal that could be simply cast instead. However, for traditional Chinese metal movable type printing, some records of the 18th century indicate that individual engraving and cutting was used as well. While creating new books using movable type, ink was applied to a plate and rubbed with paper as seen in woodblock printing. Then there was the process of assembling and setting the type, and ultimately distributing it, which necessitated at least a small level of division of labor. In fact, there are books printed in the Ming and Qing periods that designated the lists of workers who contributed to the printing, publication, and distribution of the books themselves. The bronze-type edition of the Song Dynasty encyclopedia Tai Ping Yu Lan printed in 1547 AD, in the city of Jianyang, described how two persons were responsible for typesetting while two others were in charge of the actual printing. For books that do not indicate in the initial pages whether they were printed using movable type instead of woodblock printing, there are definite signs that can be examined to deduce which method was used. Misprints, misalignment of characters, and uneven spacing are the distinct mark of many movable type editions from the time of Hua Sui. However, as time progressed and the works of printers such as Hua Jian, An Guo, and others were made, steps were made to perfect the process and thus making it harder to differentiate between woodblock printing editions and movable type editions (unless noted in the text).