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Yuan and Ming Movable-Type Printing

Type Object Region China Time 1365

After Wang Zhen of the Yuan dynasty improved wooden movable type and wrote the Nong Shu with its appendix Methods of Printing with Movable Type, mova…

Timeline

  1. 1365Jianyang bookshops · JianyangJianyang in Fujian was a major center of printing in the Yuan dynasty; in the 1360s bookshops, while mainly using woodblocks, still occasionally used wooden movable type to set and print local gazetteers, encyclopedias, and other works, reducing the cost of revisions.
  2. 1368–1370Nanjing · NanjingAfter the early Ming established its capital at Nanjing, the government printed statutes and classics, and printing workshops inherited the Yuan technological system; movable type and woodblock printing together provided means for the dissemination of documents during the Hongwu era.

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