Degeyinjingyuancang Engraved Block Printing Technique
01 · Historical Records
The Dege Printing House was established in 1729 AD. As early as 1703, the Dege Tusi (local chieftain) had already funded the carving of scripture boards and the printing of scriptures. Except for a 20-year interruption between 1958 and 1979, the history of scripture printing approaches 300 years. In 1958, the production of Tibetan paper was halted. In 2000, the printing house invited an 80-year-old elder to teach young people to make Tibetan paper, thus preliminarily rescuing this traditional craft.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Dege County is located in the northwest of the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, on the southeastern edge of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. It is a multi-ethnic county dominated by the Tibetan people, with Tibetan residents accounting for about 96% of the county's total population. Here lofty mountains and great rivers are everywhere, the scenery is magnificent, but transportation is inconvenient and the area relatively isolated; within this environment the traditional culture of the Tibetan people has been comparatively well preserved. The Dege Printing House, long known as the 'Great Encyclopedia of Tibetan Culture,' is situated in Dege County seat. During the Dege Tusi period, scriptures were printed on Tibetan paper, using about 500,000 sheets of Tibetan paper each year. The present scripture-printing process includes papermaking, block preparation, and printing. Papermaking uses the roots of the Stellera chamaejasme (wolf-poison) plant as raw material, and its technique belongs to the 'poured-paper' (jiaozhi) method system, possessing distinctive characteristics. The Dege Printing House selects red birch wood for its scripture boards; after the processes of smoke-curing, soaking in a manure pit, boiling, drying, and planing smooth, the wood will not deform for centuries and is most suitable for carving. The text carved on the printing house's boards is cut very deep, and the calligraphy is exceedingly fine, suited to repeated printing; in the course of printing, many unique techniques have been formed. The present problems are that hand production is costly, the process is complex and hard to transmit, and the production technique of Tibetan ink has not yet been revived; all of these await gradual resolution.
Archival Record of Craft Procedures
The Dege Printing House selects red birch wood for its scripture boards; after the processes of smoke-curing, soaking in a manure pit, boiling, drying, and planing smooth, the wood will not deform for centuries and is most suitable for carving.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Tibetan block-printing craft of the Dege Printing House is centered on Dege County, Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Dege County lies in the northwest of Garzê Prefecture, on the southeastern edge of the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau, with Tibetan residents accounting for about 96% of the county's total population. The Dege Printing House, long known as the 'Great Encyclopedia of Tibetan Culture,' is located in Dege County seat. During the Dege Tusi period, scriptures were printed on Tibetan paper, and its boards and scriptures are to this day collected by monasteries throughout the Tibetan region.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Tibetan Engraved Block Printing Technique.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The Tibetan paper produced is not damaged by insects, has strong ink absorption, is light in weight, has good toughness, and possesses unique value. The Dege Printing House is the foremost of the three great printing houses of the Tibetan region; the Dege-edition scriptures circulate widely and are very famous among Tibetologists within the Tibetan region and at home and abroad; therefore, the Dege scripture-printing craft should be given priority protection. Puntsok Tsering (per the official archive of the associated inheritor): Male, Tibetan ethnicity, born in 1955, from Dege, Sichuan. A representative inheritor of the first national-level batch of the Tibetan block-printing craft of the Dege Printing House, a national intangible cultural heritage project. The Dege Printing House, located in Dege County seat, is the foremost of the three great printing houses of the Tibetan region and has long been called the 'Great Encyclopedia of Tibetan Culture'; the present scripture-printing process includes papermaking, block preparation, and printing. From 1980 to 1983, Puntsok Tsering studied carving craft here under the old artisan Zepa; since 1984 he has been engaged in carving printing blocks at the Dege Printing House, including the proofreading of the blocks. Over the decades he has carved more than five thousand printing blocks, and many of the blocks are literary works and image plates never previously collected by the printing house. Puntsok Tsering has trained more than twenty apprentices; on the Lantern Festival of 2009, he also led a group to Beijing to participate in the 'Exhibition of Traditional Skills of Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage,' which drew a strong response from the audience.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Pengcuozeren 01-0192
- Duojidengci 03-1338
- Zepei 05-2776
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。