An Era of Splendor: the Color Woodblock Prints and the Art of Classical Flower Manuals in the Ming Dynasty

Speaker: Lianxi Weng | 翁连溪, Researcher, Palace Museum; Doctoral Advisor, Central Academy of Fine Art

Chinese printmaking has a long history. In the Ming dynasty, it entered what Mr. Zheng Zhenduo described as a “golden age of boundless brilliance.” The three major schools of printmaking—Jinling, Hangzhou, and Huizhou—shone in mutual splendor, while multicolored woodblock printing stood unrivaled in the world, inaugurating a glorious
chapter in the history of human printing.

This lecture will trace the development and evolution of printmaking through the dynasties, focusing on the pinnacle achievements of Ming dynasty color printing. It will offer in-depth interpretations of four classics: Luoxuan’s Letter Paper Album of Antiquities (罗轩变古笺谱), The Ten Bamboo Studio Letter Paper Album (十竹斋笺谱),
The Ten Bamboo Studio Calligraphy and Painting Manual (十竹斋花谱), and The Yin Family Letter Paper Album (殷氏笺谱Yin Shi Jianpu). The lecture will analyze extraordinary techniques such as douban (餖版assembled block printing), overprinting and embossing, revealing the lofty artistic realm in which literati printmakers united
poetry, calligraphy, painting and seal carving into a single art form.

It will also explain the profound influence of Ming dynasty flower manuals on the Qing dynasty’s Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual and the Suzhou school of prints, highlighting both technical inheritance and artistic transformation. Approaching the subject from multiple dimensions—original works, historical context, craftsmanship, and aesthetics—the lecture invites you into the most dazzling heights of ancient Chinese color-printing art.

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Lianxi Weng is currently a master's supervisor at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; a part-time professor at Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication; a doctoral supervisor at the China Academy of Art; and specially appointed professor at the Institute for the Preservation and Study of Chinese Ancient Books at Fudan University.