1520

The invention of printing allowed books and images to become household objects. Both could be reproduced quickly and in large numbers, whereas before this revolutionary technology they could only be drawn, painted or written by hand. This film focuses on woodcut printing. Printmaker and artist Anne Desmet was commissioned by the V&A to make a copy of sheet of playing cards in the Museums collections. The orginal sheet of cards was printed onto paper with a woodblock. The sheet was then hand-coloured using stencils. The use of woodblocks to print text had been known in the East since the 8th century. In Europe the technique was first applied to textiles, but shortly after 1400 it was adopted also for images.