Nowadays, book printing and various printed fonts are extremely rich, and imitation of Song Dynasty is no longer unique. However, its dignified and graceful appearance still makes people who have used or seen this font nostalgic and unforgettable.
nowadays, when typing on a computer, you can also choose a font that imitates Song style. Once upon a time, this font was all the rage, and once occupied the vision of Chinese people on banners, inside pages of books and movie subtitles. So, when did this font come into being, and how did it come about?
Imitation of Song Dynasty
It's called imitation of Song Dynasty, of course, and it's modeled after the style of Song Dynasty, but it's not exactly modeled after the font of a scholar, calligrapher and celebrity in Song Dynasty, but directly modeled after the engraving font of the Song Dynasty book. Then, why do you want to imitate the Song Dynasty instead of going forward, imitating the Sui and Tang Dynasties, or going back, imitating the Ming and Qing Dynasties? Imitating the Sui and Tang Dynasties, there were no large-scale block-printed books at that time, and the samples in the selection of words were obviously insufficient; Imitating the Ming and Qing Dynasties is not as good as imitating the Song Dynasty directly, because most of the engraving fonts in the Ming and Qing Dynasties are imitating the Song Dynasty, or they are created indirectly from the calligraphy fonts in the Song Dynasty. Of course, the imitation of the Song Dynasty also comes from the rarity of the Song version of the book itself.
it is hard to find a page in the song edition, which became a common practice as early as the Ming dynasty. Mao Jin, a bibliophile in the late Ming Dynasty, can be said to be the initiator of the discovery of the value of Song edition books, and the wind of pricing Song edition books began with this person. As a result, the Song version of the book has become a sky-high luxury in China's cultural system.
When the social fashion of valuing gold by page became popular, the copying of Song editions rose. People began to tend to completely complete replication manufacturing, requiring fidelity to perfection, requiring the unity of the shape of the motionless fraction and the spirit of the pen. This kind of reproduction in the artistic system was transformed into a pure copying technique, and in the printing process of Ming and Qing Dynasties and even deferred to the Republic of China, a special engraving category of shadow and song appeared.
In fact, we started with the art of imitating the Song Dynasty deliberately for two or three hundred years, and got inspiration from it. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Ding Fuzhi and Ding Sanzai, who were the presidents of Xiling Printing Society, decided to solicit books from the Song Dynasty, personally imitate them, engrave movable type, and then make up the printing. By 1916, this kind of regular script, which was processed and designed by two brothers, was a unified modified font that imitated the European style (Ou Yangxun's calligraphy style). Because the original fonts were all from books in the Song Dynasty, they temporarily named this font imitation Song Style. Later, Ding Shi brothers added a modifier of gathering treasures before imitating the Song Dynasty, calling it gathering treasures to imitate the Song Dynasty. Juzhen means movable type printing, which began with the title of Emperor Qianlong in Qing Dynasty. It also means that movable type is considered indecent and replaced by Juzhen, which means that it is rare to gather fonts and print them.
in 192, Juzhen got the approval of * * *, becoming the first font patent recognized by the state in China. In 1921, Zhonghua Book Company merged with Ding Shi Brothers' Juzhen Imitation Song Printing Company, and formally acquired the five types of copper die typefaces with long body notes of No.1, No.2, No.4, No.3 and No.3, and the top number, No.3, No.5, No.1 and No.4, long body notes, long and short body characters and Xixia font * * * which were successively engraved with the copied samples. Then, Zhonghua Book Company printed the large-scale ancient books collation series of "Four Reserves" with Juzhen imitation of Song Dynasty, and the complete series reached 113.5 million volumes, which were divided into 2,5 volumes; The publication of this series of books has further expanded the social influence and brand value of Juzhen's imitation of Song Dynasty. Subsequently, all kinds of books, documents and business cards printed by Juzhen in imitation of Song typeface gradually became popular in major cities in China. In 1929, Zhonghua Book Company also exported this patent to Tsuda Sansheng Hall in Nagoya, Japan; Since then, the printing of Chinese books in various parts of Southeast Asia has generally adopted the imitation of Song typeface.
Of course, Juzhen is not the only one who developed imitation Song Style, but it can't compete with it in terms of technical maturity and application scale. Until the beginning of the last century, before laser typesetting and printing books, it was still an unchangeable iron law to typeset and print books in imitation of Song typeface. Nowadays, the printing of books and all kinds of printed fonts are extremely rich, and imitation of Song Dynasty is no longer possible. However, its dignified and graceful appearance still makes people who have used or seen this font nostalgic and unforgettable.