Style combination · Pairs well

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography × Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

The same Nanjing book trade cut both: put a ruled Song-style text page opposite a graded colour leaf, as an album or a book with plates.

From the research on Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

Mix them and make something Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock

A small olive-and-cream bird with a reddish throat perches on a gnarled branch covered in pink and red blossoms against textured cream paper. A tall black-bordered panel on the left contains two large black characters and a small red floral seal. — AI-generated by Stylogeny from the recipe below, and checked against it: the type from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, the form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography, the composition from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock. Not a real or historical work.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

Type from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rotated & vertical setting
Transitional serif
Colour from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock: Gradients
Pastel

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography avoids gradients: this is where the two pull against each other.
Form from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Rectilinear
Rules & bars
Composition from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock: Isolated object
Generous white space
Surface from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography: Carved line
Paper & letterpress bite

Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock avoids carved line: this is where the two pull against each other.

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

Quiet

Shippori Mincho, standing in for Song block-cut regular script after Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan

Text · Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography

The page and letter of the East Asian book. Song block cutters copied the regular script of Tang masters; from the mid-16th century Ming cutters straightened it into a knife-made letter of thin horizontals, thick verticals and triangular stroke ends. Equal square characters run in right-to-left vertical columns in a ruled frame folded at a central column. As metal type in Shanghai and Nagasaki it became Mincho, Myeongjo and the standard CJK text face. Frame, rules and fold column belong to the woodblock page; type keeps the letter, the square and, in Japan and Taiwan, the vertical column.

Shippori Mincho; Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography used Song block-cut regular script after Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan and Ming-style Songti / Mingti, the straightened 'craftsman's' letter, mature by the Wanli era

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock, with a counter-accent from Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)

#e9e0cc ground · 36%
#403e3a ink · 14%
#b8352d accent · 18%
#d27a7f accent · 14%
#d6c49c accent · 10%
#5f7986 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #e9e0cc;
  --ink: #403e3a;
  --accent-1: #b8352d;
  --accent-2: #d27a7f;
  --accent-3: #d6c49c;
  --accent-4: #5f7986;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
}

Use it with care

Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho): Have any Chinese, Japanese or Korean text set and proofread by a fluent reader: Song, Mincho and Myeongjo fonts draw some characters differently for each locale, and pseudo-characters, mirrored glyphs or random hanzi used as texture read as nonsense or worse. Pages of Buddhist sutras and other scripture carry devotional text; do not crop them into decoration.

Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua): Woodblock printing in watercolour (muban shuiyin) of this kind is still practised by studios such as Duoyunxuan in Shanghai and Rong Bao Zhai in Beijing and is on China's national list of intangible cultural heritage (木版水印技艺, VIII-77: Rong Bao Zhai 2006, Duoyunxuan 2008 and the Hangzhou Shizhuzhai Art Museum 2014): commission or credit their carvers and printers rather than passing off a digital imitation as a hand-printed edition, and never present a generated image as a leaf of the 1633 Collection, the 1644 Letter Papers or the Mustard Seed Garden manual. Have every inscription written or checked by a fluent reader, because image models invent pseudo-characters, and never make up a seal bearing a real painter's, collector's or studio's name.

The two styles

A vintage-style bookstore poster has large black Japanese characters stacked vertically in a central panel, with smaller vertical lettering along both sides. Black ruled borders, red four-petal motifs, diamonds and dots decorate a textured cream background.

c. 960–present · East Asia Song–Ming Woodblock Book Typography (Songti / Mincho) The page and letter of the East Asian book. Song block cutters copied the regular script of Tang masters; from the mid-16th century Ming cutters straightened it into a knife-made letter of thin horizontals, thick verticals and triangular stroke ends. Equal square characters run in right-to-left vertical columns in a ruled frame folded at a central column. As metal type in Shanghai and Nagasaki it became Mincho, Myeongjo and the standard CJK text face. Frame, rules and fold column belong to the woodblock page; type keeps the letter, the square and, in Japan and Taiwan, the vertical column. 1626–present · East Asia Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua) A kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting. Each picture is cut into many small blocks, one for each part and colour (douban). The water-based colour is partly wiped off to grade it and printed in overlapping tones, so washes take the place of a black outline; on deluxe leaves and letter paper, uninked blocks press white relief into the paper (gonghua). Bamboo, plum, orchids, rocks, birds and fruit stand alone on blank paper, with small red seals and a brushed poem, often on the facing leaf, in albums for learning to paint.