A typical brick stamp of the ruler Naram-Sin for example would read 'Naram-sin builder, the temple of Goddess Inanna'. īrick stamps were used by the Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BCE) in Mesopotamia in order to dedicate the bricks used in temples, by inscribing the name of the ruler.

Stencils were used for mass publications, as the type did not have to be hand-written.īrick stamps Brick stamp of Shar-Kali-Sharri, National Museum of Iraq. This was especially the case with playing-cards, which continued to be coloured by stencil long after most other subjects for prints were left in black and white. In Europe, from about 1450 AD they were commonly used to colour old master prints printed in black and white, usually woodcuts. Stencils may have been used to colour cloth for a very long time the technique probably reached its peak of sophistication in katazome and other techniques used on silks for clothes during the Edo period in Japan. More recently, stencilling has historically been used as a painting technique on all kinds of materials. Hand stencils, made by blowing pigment over a hand held against a wall, have been found in Asia and Europe dating from over 35,000 years ago, and later prehistoric dates in other continents. Stencil Hands at the Cuevas de las Manos upon Río Pinturas, near the town of Perito Moreno in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina Alongside the development of text printing, new and lower-cost methods of image reproduction were developed, including lithography, screen printing and photocopying. This industry enabled the communication of ideas and the sharing of knowledge on an unprecedented scale, leading to the global spread of the printing press during the early modern period.

By the end of the 15th century, his invention and widescale circulation of the Gutenberg Bible became responsible for a burgeoning economical book publishing industry across Renaissance Europe and eventually among the colonial publishers and printers that emerged in the British-American colonies. Late medieval German inventor Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press based on previously known mechanical presses and a process for mass-producing metal type. Woodblock printing was also used in Europe until the mid-15th century. The technology also spread outside China, with the oldest extant printed book using metal movable type being the Jikji, printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo era. However, the use of copper movable types was documented in a Song-era book from 1193, and the earliest printed paper money using movable metal type to print the identifying codes were made in 1161. Movable type was invented by Chinese artisan Bi Sheng in the 11th century during the Song dynasty, but it received limited use compared to woodblock printing.

The Chinese Buddhist Diamond Sutra, printed by woodblock on 11 May 868, is the earliest known printed book with a precise publishing date. Initially a method of printing patterns on cloth such as silk, woodblock printing for texts on paper originated in China by the 7th century during the Tang dynasty, leading to the spread of book production and woodblock printing in other parts of Asia such as Korea and Japan. Other early forms include block seals, hammered coinage, pottery imprints, and cloth printing. The history of printing starts as early as 3000 BCE, when the proto-Elamite and Sumerian civilizations used cylinder seals to certify documents written in clay tablets.

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