Shizhuzhai Jianpu [Shih-chu-chai chien-p'u]

A masterpiece of Chinese multi-block colour printing, masterfully reprinted, in exactly the same technique as the original and printed on the most magnificent paper.

Description: 4 vols. stab bound with gold speckled, ochre coloured paper wrappers, paper label with calligraphic lettering to front; housed in the original silk brocade folding box with calligraphic paper label and 2 bone clasps. Quarto 31 × 21 cm; unpaginated. With 283 woodblock prints on double-folded leaves (coloured [taoban], black and white, embossed [gonghua]).

Ref.: Cahill, Pictorial Colorprinting in China and Japan; Tschichold, 1970; Wright, Fashioning Biography

Condition: A near fine copy.

Notes: The late Ming/early Qing dynasty publisher Hu Zhengyan (ca. 1584–1674) is one of the most frequently studied figures in the history of Chinese prints. Hu came to Nanjing in 1619 and opened a print shop which he called Shizhuzhai (Ten Bamboo Studio). Hu was a successful publisher and businessman, producing a variety of books, for which he served at times as supervisor of carving, collator, and editor, but he also had a reputation as a calligrapher, seal carver, and producer of inks and letter papers. Beside the famous Shizhuzhai shuhuapu (Ten Bamhoo Studio manual of calligraphy and painting), the Shizhuzhai jianpu (Ten Bamboo Studio Letter Paper), published in late 1644 or early 1645, is another remarkable example of the sophisticated Chinese multi-block colour printing technique. The Shizhuzhai jianpu served to promote one of the products of the Ten Bamboo Studio, letter paper. James Cahill writes about the status of these high-quality papers in Chinese society in the late Ming period: "The letter-papers testify to the level of taste in the people for whom they were intended, and to the self-confidence those people must have felt in overlaying their calligraphy and their poetic or epistolatory sentiments upon such exquisite grounds." Jan Tschichold writes about the reprint of Jung Pao-Chai's Shizhuzhai jianpu in 1952: "Just like the original, the reprints belong to the greatest masterpieces of the art of printing. They are admirably accurately reproduced, printed in exactly the same technique as the original on the most splendid paper and replace the only original copy in the most perfect way as hardly any other reprint of an old work."