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SCREEN PRINTING HISTORY

 
Silk printing is, maybe, the oldest and the most practical printing technique. Its history dates back to ancient times b.c.

According to tradition, silk printing originated from China, like most processes not very well known and thus attributed by origin to remote mysterious countries.

There are hypotheses about the Chinese origin of silk printing based on the fact that silk began to be produced there at least 12 centuries before Christ. However, there is no evidence that may prove it with due trustworthiness.

According to available historical facts silk printing might have originated not far from the Medirerranean Sea, and to be more precise, from the area between Mesopotamia and Phoenicia. Numerous specific coincidences indicate that it was the Phoenicians, who were the custodians of silk printing, which was then considered to be an art.

Archeological finds and historical studies show that the Phoenicians (or some neighbouring ethnos) found a way to reproduce patterns, at least on fabrics, using the techniques, which naturally have nothing in common with the present day ones. However, they represent the birth of a "reproduction" system, a system of "image duplication".

It is more appropriate to consider the birth of silk printing not as an art, originating from printing on fabrics, where silk or other ones, but as a technological process based on reproducing relatively simple patterns with the help of special matrices, or "stamps" onto which dyes were rolled with tampons made of different fabrics.

This technique was very significantly improved whole 18 centuries later, approximately in 1185-1333 near the city of Kamakura, the Isle of Nipon, which was then the capital of Japan. In those day all arts flourished in the city, including the printing art. The Samurai armour and horse harnesses were decorated by both the stencil technique and by the brilliant innovation: the designs obtained simply by cutting out the material being incapable of holding the whole pattern together, such designs were cut out and glued onto a sort of screen made of human hair and stretched on a wooden frame. Thus the pattern held together in all its parts and the thin hairs were unnoticeable once the dye-moistened tampon was pressed to the fabric to be decorated.

This printing technique which was given a further impetus in the end of the 16th century, became widespread in Europe in the Middle Ages. The technique was spreading mostly in England and France, where approximately in 1750 Jeanne Papillon began to make wall paper by the technique called Pochoir.

In the 18th century this art became widespread almost worldwide , and in particular in America, where this technique was used for decorating furniture, walls, fabrics and metal ware. A big step forward occurred in 1907, when a certain Simon from Manchester patented a process of printing through a silk screen, which guaranteed a higher tensile strength, better size stability and the application of rubber blades (later called squeegees) for applying the ink. The invention was catalogued under the name SILK SCREEN PRINTING.

Thus, the present day name silk printing is quite recent. Since that day the silk printing technique began to be used for printing on all sorts of backings, from fabrics to posters, from postcards to labels and to vehicle license plates.