from historical tradition to relay renewal

China is the inventor of printmaking. At present, the earliest printmaking is the title page illustration of the Diamond Sutra published in the 9th century in the British Library. Since the Song Dynasty, the economy has prospered, official engraving, temple engraving and private engraving have sprung up, and the block printed books with illustrations have gradually expanded from the religious field to various fields of social life: Confucian classics, museums, archaeology, maps, science and technology books, opera librets, novels, calligraphy and painting scores, paper scores, woodblock New Year pictures and various practical printed materials. In the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, the engraving and printing of illustrated books were in full swing, almost reaching the situation of "no book, no picture, no precision"

the outstanding representatives of Chinese traditional watermark printmaking are shizhuzhai painting manual and shizhuzhai annotation manual in the 17th century, as well as a large number of rare illustrations of ancient books and folk woodblock New Year pictures with different regional aesthetic characteristics. These watermark woodcuts, which take the Chinese Painting Schema and aesthetic concept as the standard, paper-based water-based pigments as the media and engraving as the main printing technology, have gradually formed a huge visual image production and dissemination system with continuously complete technical system and distinctive regional style, which once had a far-reaching impact on woodblock prints in East Asia and Japanese ukiyo woodblock prints in the 18th century. In the world printmaking atlas, there are two sections: the Western printmaking language style dominated by copperplate, lithograph and mimeograph woodcut and the Oriental printmaking language style represented by Chinese woodcut watermark. From a certain point of view, watermark