A Study Of The Craftsman Style Characters In The Printed Copies Of Ancient Chinese Books

The traditional Chinese ancient books can be divided into handwritten and printed from the way of production.The handwritten edition can be divided into manuscript edition and copy edition,while the printed edition can be divided into engraving edition,movable type edition and stone print edition.Printed books are the mainstream of the existing ancient books because they are easy to copy and have a large production.From the font used in printed books,the vast majority of existing printed books use a kind of font with uniform stroke arrangement,mechanical structure,horizontal and vertical,horizontal thin and vertical thick,rigid stroke lines,and obvious triangle decoration at the end of the horizontal line.This kind of font has a variety of names today,which is called craftsman style in this paper.Engraving printing was invented in the late Tang Dynasty,movable type printing was invented in the late Song Dynasty,while craftsman type was gradually produced and rapidly popularized in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.Since the invention of craftsman style characters,it has rapidly become the mainstream font in the publishing industry.With the popularity of craftsman style characters,the ancient publishing industry has entered the peak of production.The high prosperity of the publishing industry in Ming and Qing Dynasties is closely related to the application of craftsman style characters.Craftsman's character is a kind of font that comes from carving practice rather than writing practice.That is to say,from craftsman's character,the ancient handwriting and special script began to separate.In addition to writing script,script font is no longer a dependency of script,but has an independent development route.The wide application of craftsman style characters not only runs through the history of block printing after the middle of Ming Dynasty,but also gradually becomes the modern song style characters through the continuous processing of engravers,carrying Chinese culture and infiltrating into all aspects of today's life.In fact,from the middle of Ming Dynasty to the end of Qing Dynasty,the craftsman style characters not only experienced the development period from the beginning to maturity,but also had many differences due to different regions and the main body of engraving Within a book,different craftsman characters are often used in the text and notes,and there are countless changes between seemingly identical craftsman characters.This paper focuses on the origin,the historical process,the regional characteristics and the characteristics of different printing subjects of the craftsman style characters in the Chinese ancient books.Generally speaking,craftsman style characters originated in Hongzhi period of Ming Dynasty.The reason for their birth is the great increase of publishing demand and the commercialization of publishing industry.In the late Ming Dynasty and the early Qing Dynasty,craftsman style characters evolved rapidly,and entered a stable and beautiful stage in Yongzheng and Qianlong periods.After that,there were only some small changes The regional development of craftsman style characters was obviously unbalanced.The area along Taihu Lake,mainly Suzhou,was the birthplace of craftsman style characters.Craftsman style characters matured first in this area.In addition,the development of craftsman style characters in Zhejiang,Jiangxi,Anhui,Beijing and Fujian provinces was uneven Craftsman style characters have their own characteristics.Among various printing subjects,square engraving plays a more important role in promoting the development of craftsman style characters.The most obvious difference between different printing subjects lies in the fineness of engraving.It is a common phenomenon to use several craftsman style characters in the same book or even the same page.