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History of Relief Printmaking
Relief printing is one of the oldest forms of printmaking and is believed to have its origins in China before 220 AD. It developed both as an art form and a commercial enterprise for textiles in the Far East. The western relief tradition also began with printing on cloth and continued to become the earliest form of book illustration in the western canon beginning around 1460, soon after books began to be printed with moveable type. The printing craft developed mostly for commercial use over the next few centuries. It is only relatively recently, in the late 1880's, that artist began regularly creating matrices and printing unique images. To describe this practice, a new artist designation of "printmaker" evolved.
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