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( Printing)
Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing. The earliest surviving woodblock printed fragments are from China and are of silk printed with flowers in three colours from the Han dynasty (before 220 CE), and the earliest example of woodblock printing on paper appeared in the mid-7th century in China. Woodblock printing on cloth appeared in Roman Egypt by the 4th century. Block printing, called tarsh in Arabic was developed in Arabic Egypt during the 9th-10th centuries, mostly for prayers and amulets. There is some evidence to suggest that the print blocks were made from a variety of different materials besides wood, including metals such as tin, lead and cast iron, as well as stone, glass and clay. However, the techniques employed are uncertain and they appear to have had very little influence outside of the Muslim world. Though Europe adopted woodblock printing from the Muslim world, initially for fabric, the technique of metal block printing remained unknown in Europe. Block printing later went out of use in Islamic Central Asia after movable type printing was introduced from China.[1] Block printing first came to Christian Europe as a method for printing on cloth, where it was common by 1300. Images printed on cloth for religious purposes could be quite large and elaborate, and when paper became relatively easily available, around 1400, the medium transferred very quickly to small woodcut religious images and playing cards printed on paper. These prints were produced in very large numbers from about 1425 onwards.
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