HISTORY OF FROM STENCILS TO ROTARY SCREENS PRINTING

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF FROM STENCILS TO ROTARY SCREENS PRINTING
The technique of stencil printing, initially used for simple patterns on walls and for lettering, was developed into an intricate craft for fabric printing in Japan [8]. In the 17th century the idea of tying together parts of the stencil with human hair initiated the development. Then in 1850 in Lyons the first use of silk gauze as a supporting stencil base was employed, and the technique soon became known as screen printing. This proved to be the answer to the requirements of the couture business, partly because the designers found it well suited to their needs, but also because strong, bright colours could be obtained with minimal restriction on repeat dimensions. The use of hand screen printing grew in the period 1930 to 1954 and was ideal for the growing quantities of man-made fibre fabrics, especially the knitted fabrics. With the successful mechanisation of flat-screen printing and ultimately the use of rotary screen machines, the days of the copper roller machine were numbered. In 1990 the worldwide production from the latter was estimated to be only 16% of the total, while 59% was from rotary screens. In the UK the switch from copper roller printing was initially slow but then accelerated, the technique’s share falling from 90% in 1960 to only 6.6% in 1992. In the same period the output from rotary-screen printing grew from perhaps 1% of the total to 82.8%. Thus the machine introduced in 1785 dominated the industry for some 160 years, but is now fast disappearing. The use of copper rollers is still important in the gravure method of printing in colour on paper. The dimensional stability, uniform thickness and surface smoothness of paper make it possible to achieve a much greater precision than is possible on textile fabrics. Even in the paper printing sector, however, cheaper methods have captured a significant fraction of what was the market for gravure machines. This is relevant to our consideration of textile printing in relation to transfer printing, which provides a valuable approach to garment printing and for the printing of polyester fibre fabrics, and which currently holds about 6% of the total market.

HISTORY OF ENGRAVED COPPER PRINTING

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ENGRAVED COPPER PRINTING
The most significant innovation of the century, however, was the adoption of the intaglio technique, first in Dublin by Francis Nixon in 1752, then in London. European artists had discovered the possibilities of reproducing pictures from an engraved metal plate in the 15th century. Copper could be incised by hand with a sharp steel tool, and was the preferred metal. Application of ink to the plate and cleaning the unengraved surface with a cloth preceded the careful laying on to the plate of a sheet of moistened paper which was then passed, on a board, through a press. This consisted of two rollers, with blankets providing some resilience and ensuring good contact with the ink. Nixon realised that this technique could be used in modified form for printing textile fabrics, thus providing a vital step in the movement towards a machine-based industry.

The Italian word intaglio had been applied to engraving of gemstones and metal.
Wood engravings were obtained by printing from a surface left raised after cutting away negative areas, as for block printing on fabric. Intaglio prints produce much finer line and stipple effects. The effort required for hand engraving was soon reduced by application to the plate of a thin coating of blackened wax, which is easily scratched through to allow a controlled etching of the copper in an acid bath. Tonal effects are obtained by recoating with wax, except for the areas for dark tones, which are then etched to a greater depth. Artists who excelled in the use of this technique included Dürer, early in the 16th century, and later Rembrandt, Turner and Picasso.

The ‘obvious’ extension to prints on fabric had only occurred, before Nixon’s time, in the production of maps on silk and similar applications where fast dyes were not required. Nixon took his technique to London in 1755, where there was already an established group of printers using block and wax-resist techniques, and by 1761 ‘an entirely new type of printed fabric decorated with figures, landscapes and architecture’ confirmed the English pre-eminence in the field [5]. It was the delicacy of these prints, together with the boldness of large repeats that made London the world fashion centre for a while. It was also a recovery of the fine but bold style of the best Indian prints but with a European signature. Schuele took the technique to Augsburg in 1766 and Oberkampf started using it in Jouy in 1770.

Copper plate printing did not displace block printing, because the skills required were greater and it was difficult to ensure that the design repeats fitted satisfactorily. The fabric was moved with the plate for each impression and the plate had then to be returned. The fabric tended to move out of line and its position and squareness had to be corrected by hand. The perfect answer to the fitting problem was to turn the copper plate into a cylinder, and this would allow truly continuous production at high speed. Even as early as 1699 it was claimed that an engraved (presumably wooden) cylinder had been used successfully [1], and patents were taken out in England in 1743 and 1764 for cylinder machines. It was 1783, however, before all the requirements for successful engraved copper roller printing were actually worked out and patented by Thomas Bell, a Scotsman. The first machine was in use in 1785 in Lancashire, and by 1840 there were 435 machines in England alone. The vital feature of Bell’s machine was the use of a sharp steel ‘doctor’ blade to remove all the colour paste from the unengraved surface of the roller. The name given to the blade was derived from the word abductor, because it took away the unwanted ink.

Although considerable skill was required to engrave and use copper rollers, the increase in productivity resulting from their use was so great that block printing inevitably declined. Turnbull says that ‘where by block it was only possible to print of the simplest pattern about six pieces per day, it was now possible to print by machine up to 500 pieces per day of a similar pattern’ [6]. This was a revolution even more significant than those occurring in the spinning and weaving sectors, and there were inevitable disputes and strikes. But there could be no putting the clock back. Edmund Potter said in a lecture to the Society of Arts in 1852 that the output of printed calico in England increased from 1 million pieces (of 30 yards) in 1796 to 7 million in 1821, and to 20 million in 1851. By 1851 the number of machines had reached 604, while the number of blocking tables declined from 8234 in 1840 to 3939. By 1880 very few tables were still in use, except for the printing of silk and specialist styles. The rise of the roller machine reached a peak in 1911, when production from British printworks amounted to 1400 million yards, of which 90% was exported [7]. Worldwide, roller machine production accounted for more than half of the total yardage printed until 1976, almost 200 years after Bell’s 1783 patent.

While copper roller machines proved ideal for high-volume, low-cost printing of woven cotton fabrics, there was always a market for small-scale production of individual designs, especially on silk, wool and, later, on man-made fabrics. For these, roller printing was not suitable at all. The costs of engraving and setting up the machine for each run were high, and long runs were therefore essential. Block printing satisfied the demand for some time, but an alternative, fundamentally different approach emerged.

HISTORY OF BLOCK PRINTING

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF BLOCK PRINTING
Block printing history is much more complex. The word ‘printing’ implies a process that uses pressure, being derived from a Latin word meaning pressing. The German word druck for print also means pressure. And there is no doubt that the first textile-printing technique (making impressions) was that using blocks with raised printing surfaces, which were inked and then pressed on to the fabric. By repetition, the image from a single block builds up into a complete design over the fabric area. Some early blocks were made of clay or terracotta, others of carved wood. Wooden blocks carrying design motifs were found in tombs near the ancient town of Panopolis in Upper Egypt. In the same area a child’s tomb contained a tunic made of fabric printed with a design of white rectangles, each enclosing floral motifs on a blue background. Pliny (born AD 23) described in his book Historia naturalis how in Egypt they applied colourless substances to a fabric that was later immersed in a dyebath that quickly produced several colours. As Pliny also records that the best-quality alum was obtained from Egypt, it seems likely that alum was one of the mordants used and that the dye was madder.

By the 14th century the use of wooden blocks for printing was certainly established in France, Italy and Germany, but the craft was practised by ‘painters’, using mineral pigments rather than dyes. One of the early European uses of blocks was to produce church hangings that imitated the more expensive brocades and tapestries. Cennini, writing in 1437, described in some detail the production and use of brick-sized wooden blocks to print a black outline on brightly coloured cloth, which was then hand painted with other bright colours. In 1460 the nuns of a convent in Nuremberg described the block printing of mineral colours in boiled resinous oils, of gold and silver leaf, and of wool ‘flock’ on to a printed adhesive.

In the 15th century Portuguese traders were discovering the potential for trade with India, where the dyed style was used to produce cotton fabrics of great beauty that were quickly in demand in Europe. As early as the first century AD there was an Indian centre famous for the production of painted fabric, and the use of madder was by then long established. Early in the 17th century hand-painted Indian cottons were reaching London in significant quantities. They were both colourful and colour-fast, and introduced a richness of novel and stimulating design styles. Paisley designs, for example, were derived directly from one of these styles and the words ‘calico’ and ‘chintz’ were adopted into the language at around this time. A substantial and lucrative import trade began, reaching a peak about 1700. In 1708, Daniel Defoe wrote that ‘everything that used to be wool or silk was supplied by the Indian trade’.

The craftsmanship applied to produce these prints can be judged from the following summary of the process. The cloth was wetted with milk and burnished to achieve a smooth surface. The design was transferred from paper, using charcoal powder that was rubbed through holes pricked in the paper. The main outlines were painted in and the fabric was then waxed, except for the areas that were to be blue or green. The latter were dyed in a bath of reduced indigo, and the wax was then removed by scraping and washing. After drying, the reds, pinks, lilacs, browns and blacks were painted in with the appropriate metal acetate mordants, aged and developed in a madder extract dyebath. If necessary, the pale areas were rewaxed and darker colours obtained by a second dyeing. Thorough washing removed most of the unfixed dye, and then bleaching in the sun whitened the ground. Painting in a saffron yellow for green and yellow areas completed the work.

The desire to imitate these prints in order to compete in the new market was soon aroused. Merchants who had earlier organised the production of larger quantities by the Indians, and who had also encouraged them to speed up the process by using block printing, turned to the foundation of factories in Europe near the main ports of entry. In 1648 the first recorded calico-printing factory was set up in Marseille. In 1676 there were units in Amsterdam and London. Among the merchants who financed the trade was one of the best known Huguenot families, the Deneufvilles, and before the end of the century the Huguenots had established the new industry in Berlin, Bremen, Frankfurt, Neuchatel, Lausanne and Geneva.


The importance of printing in the commerce of Europe was very significant in the
18th century and the growth of the textile industry was clearly stimulated by the demand for prints. The British prohibition of printed cotton in 1721 actually helped because Lancashire-woven linen/cotton ‘fustians’, which used flax grown in the Fylde area, were exempt. The linen yarn provided a strong warp, and the developing industry moved from London to the Manchester region, and also to Northern Ireland and Scotland where flax was also grown. The factory system of spinning had not yet been developed; it was not until 1766 that Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny. Yet in 1729 there were already four Dutch printers employing more than 100 workers in each unit. In Britain the number of calico-printing firms grew from 28 in 1760 to 111 in 1785, with annual production rising to 12 million yards, and in 1792 it was estimated that at least 60% of the white cotton cloth produced was sent to the printers. After 1774, when Richard Arkwright achieved the repeal of the 1721 Prohibition Act, most of the growth was in the printing of 100% cotton fabric. Liverpool now became the centre for raw cotton import.

How had the European printers acquired the necessary skills? Making wooden blocks would not be too difficult but finding suitable thickeners may have taken time. Gum Senegal and tragacanth seem to have emerged as useful, and starch was added to improve the colour yield. A combination of block printing and painting (usually described as pencilling) was used for some time. The biggest problem was that of achieving bright and fast colours. Madder was the most important dye that was able to satisfy the need. It had been known, and used with a mordant, since Saxon times but not in prints or on cotton. Awareness of what the Indians had achieved was important, and information about their methods would be gleaned from merchants and from returned missionaries. As late as 1742 details of the method were being sought from a French Jesuit in Pondicherry by a friend in France. The importance of pretreating the cotton with milk fat may have been a vital piece of information, though olive oil became the preferred material in Europe. Attaining a bright red was a preoccupation for many years, and recipes became more and more complicated. The processes of ageing the print and clearing the last traces of madder from unprinted areas also presented new problems that were not solved immediately.

HISTORY OF PRINTING

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING
The history of printing is more popular and more ancient. The ancient printing history is not so clear. Textile printing is the most versatile and important of the methods used for introducing colour and design to textile fabrics. Considered analytically it is a process of bringing together a design idea, one or more colorants, and a textile substrate (usually a fabric), using a technique for applying the colorants with some precision. Several techniques have been used and the colorants available have multiplied. This articles about history of printing presents an overview of the changes that have occurred, together with an examination of some techniques that have almost ceased to be of commercial importance, for their own intrinsic value for the historical development of printing.

If we want to discuss about the history of printing we must know about the desire to create garments and other artifacts that reflect the beauty of the world around us and provide for the expression of our artistic nature has been evident from early in human history. The decoration of the body presumably predates the production of clothing. Early men and women used the colorants that were available to them, such as charcoal and coloured earths (ochres), mixed with oils and fats, applying them at first with their fingers and sticks to a variety of substrates. Staining of fabrics with plant extracts provided a different approach; patterns could be produced by applying beeswax as a resist to the dye liquor or by tying threads tightly around the areas to be resisted. The realisation that certain colourless materials could be used as mordants to fix some plant dyes was a vital step in the prehistory of dyeing and printing. The discovery that different mordants, applied first, gave different colours with the same dye (for example, from the madder root) must have seemed litle short of magical and suggested a style of printing (the dyed style) that was to become of cardinal importance.

Where the printing style originated – whether in India, Egypt, China or elsewhere – is not clear. Brunello states that an early variety of cotton dyed with madder around 3000 BC was found in jars in the Indus valley. Taylor gives evidence of madder on flax found in Egypt and dated at 1400 BC. In China the dyeing of silk was developed very early, and China is credited with the invention of paper printing and therefore may well have seen the birth of fabric printing.

Apart from transfer printing, there are five essentially different approaches to the printing of any substrate. We have seen that three have achieved historical importance in the textile field – the surface (block), intaglio and screen methods – and that nowadays screen printing is the predominant approach. A fourth approach, lithography, has been used to a very small extent for printing smooth surface fabrics but is of more importance in paper printing, including transfer paper.

The fifth approach, jet printing, is a 20th century method of building up a design from ink drops. It is already important for printing pile fabrics (Chapter 4) and paper, and could become a serious competitor to screen printing. It is the only approach that can provide the really rapid response to changing demand that is increasingly expected, because there is no requirement for the production or changing of patterned screens or rollers; in addition, instantaneous use for sampling or long runs is potentially available. The significant development in these last decades of the century has been the success of computer technology, so that computer-aided design (CAD) systems and colour match prediction are in regular use. The scanning of an original design can now provide the data required for its reproduction by any technique, but fits into the jet printing route more directly because the jets require only electrical control. It remains to be seen, however, if the development of jet systems that are practical and economic for a wide range of fabrics can be achieved. The first commercial production unit, based on Canon bubble-jet technology, is being built in Japan.