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

Presentation An Era of Splendor: the Color Woodblock Prints and the Art of Classical Flower Manuals in the Ming Dynasty June 8, 2026 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm Online More Details More Details Presented by UCLA Library, The Claremont Colleges Library and Columbia University Libraries with funding support from the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation. Speaker: Lianxi Weng | 翁连溪, 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 an integrated art practice. 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. This program will be delivered in Chinese with live simultaneous English interpretation provided by Yu Xuan Tay, Ph. D. student of Buddhist Studies at UCLA. Click the More Details button to RSVP or register now (opens in a new tab) . 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 invited professor at the Institute for the Preservation and Study of Chinese Ancient Books at Fudan University. Related Series May 04 EVENT SERIES Training the Trainers: Materiality of Ming Books and Manuscripts May 4, 2026 - July 27, 2026 An introduction to the history and material culture of Ming books and manuscripts