Chapter 10 Section 1 Layout Design of Ancient Chinese Books

The ancestors of our Chinese nation were very artistic and aesthetic.They often combine the practical value of the material with the artistic value, thus creating many practical and beautiful material products.In the development of book production, it also reflects the infinite creativity of the working people in ancient my country. Of course, it is difficult to talk about the beauty and design art of the oracle bone inscriptions of the early books.Bronze ware itself is a very simple and elegant work of art, and the inscriptions cast and engraved on bronze ware, of course, also have a beautiful appeal.The Shiguwen of Qin State is a famous book made of stone in ancient times.Why is it made into a drum shape?I'm afraid there is an intention to beautify it.The shape of a stone drum is always more beautiful than a square or shapeless chaotic stone.Bamboo and wood bamboo slips, since they have to be cut into narrow strips, it is naturally difficult to decorate them beautifully.But its upper and lower woven ropes and long and narrow strips were imitated and inherited by handwritten silk scripts and paper books.Even after the appearance of printed books, the borders of the sidebars still retain the aftertaste of the early bamboo and wood bamboo slips, handwritten silk scripts, and paper books.The original intention of the handwritten silk script weaving and the painted side rails should be an imitation of the bamboo and wood bamboo slips.The sidebar refers to the column line drawn and woven around the text, also known as the border.Boundary lines refer to the weaving and drawing boundaries between text lines, also known as column lines.The ancients weaving and drawing borders on silk is certainly related to the ease and orderliness of the written text, but tracing back to the source is still an imitation of the compiled bamboo and wood bamboo slips.Until the appearance of printed books, the frame and borders still carried the will of bamboo and wood bamboo slips, handwritten silk scripts, and paper scripts.This kind of inheritance and innovation in the evolution of things is a common phenomenon in nature and human society.

After the appearance of printed books, especially after the Song Dynasty, due to changes in the production methods of books, the layout design of books also changed accordingly.Handwritten paper books, silk scripts, and even bamboo and wood slips all have great freedom, that is, they can be cut at will according to the length of the article.Printed books are different. The length of text in one edition is not so random.It is not restricted by the paragraphs of the article, but must be limited by the size of the layout.Simply put, printed books are based on each edition as the basic unit.Therefore, its sidebar boundary line, book mouth, fish tail, etc., can only work hard on the pattern.

For handwritten paper books and silk books, the sidebar boundaries of printed books also carry the meaning of inheritance and imitation.Books printed by engraving do not need sidebars, and they can be dignified and tidy. Later generations printed books without sidebars.But it's better to have a sidebar to make it more dignified and tidy, which has the charm of beauty in it.From the Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the sidebars of printed books can be roughly divided into four sides: one side around, two sides around and two sides on the left and right.The so-called unilateral all around means that the border around the text is just a thick black surrounding line.The so-called two-sided around means that there is a thin surrounding line inside the thick black frame.The so-called left and right sides mean that there is a thin straight line inside the thick black left and right sidebars.These situations constitute the basic form of the layout of ancient Chinese printed books.It looks dignified and generous, strict and simple.This is a beauty in itself.

In the Ming Dynasty, especially in the late Ming Dynasty, certain bookstores engraved books such as operas, novels, or picture books. In order to win the joy of readers and achieve the purpose of easy sale and profit, they not only engraved and printed them according to the contents of the books. The number of different illustrations and prints was also carefully designed on the sidebars and layouts, and appeared in the form of flower columns and dot panels.The so-called flower fence refers to the fact that the surrounding sidebars are no longer a simple thick black ink line, but a thick black ink line is changed into two thin lines with a certain distance.Various patterns are carved in the middle of these two thin lines, so it becomes a fence.As the name suggests, simply put, the flower bar is a side bar with patterns.As far as I can see now, the decorations in the fence are also various, including flower and grass patterns, bamboo knot patterns, cloud dragon patterns, and Bogu patterns.There are ink single prints and blue single prints.It looks fresh and unique.This is purely artistic decoration, and the beauty is contained.The so-called dot board refers to engraving celebrity comments or sentence readings along with the text when engraving the board, and the printed layout has some circles next to the text.Of course, this kind of intention is to remind readers to pay attention and help readers to punctuate sentences, but it also has a certain artistic effect.After the emergence of the printing technique, two-color, three-color or even four-color and five-color charms appeared on the text layout at the same time, which became a work of art.Therefore, ancient Chinese books, including some handwritten paper books and silk books, are first of all books with ideological content and academic and material value, and they are also works of art with beauty.

There is also a book edge in the layout, also known as the plate mouth, also known as the core, which is unique to printed books.The book edge refers to the middle seam of a version, which is taken as the standard when it is a hinge.If it is simple to deal with, engraving a thin line can have the same effect, and it is not bad.However, the ancients did not adopt a simple approach, but combined practicality and art, and carefully designed the image of the plate mouth. There are white mouths and black mouths.Black mouth can be divided into thick black mouth and thin black mouth.The thick black mouth is also called the big black mouth, and the thin black mouth is also called the thread black mouth.Most of the engraved books in the Song Dynasty were written in white, but in the Southern Song Dynasty, there were black seals.In the Yuan Dynasty, the thin black mouth was exaggerated and became thick and thick.Before Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty, engraved books still imitated the Yuan system, and they were still Daheikou.After Jiajing, along with the revival movement in literature, engraved books also revived the ancient times of the Song Dynasty, and most of them were written in vain.In the Qing Dynasty, there were both black and white engraved books, but most of them were white.The white mouth is the embodiment of fine engraving.Many engraved books of the Song Dynasty are engraved with the number of words of the original edition at the mouth of the book (referring to the part above the upper fish tail), and the engraver's name is engraved on the part below the lower fish tail.This is to clarify responsibilities, negotiate the price on a piece-by-piece basis, and pay wages.After becoming a black mouth, this meaning no longer exists.

The fish tail also belongs to the content inside the mouth of the book, which can be divided into single fish tail and double fish tail.There is also the theory of black fish tail and white fish tail, and the difference between right fish tail and smooth fish tail.its image is .The purpose of the fish tail is probably only to mark the seam, but the ancients designed it as a fish tail image, which is both beautiful and practical.The title, volume and page number are engraved between the upper and lower fishtails.Therefore, some people call this kind of book mouth with engraved characters as Huakou.

There are two kinds of Ming edition books in the Yenching Library of Harvard University in the United States, and there are painted pictures on the mouth of the books.That is after the books are bound, the mouth of a book is twisted into a flat surface and painted on it.No painting can be seen when it is placed flat, but when it is twisted, the picture will appear vividly.Although this does not belong to the design of the engraved publication layout, it is also an attempt to beautify the mouth of the book. In short, the layout design of ancient Chinese books is both dignified and beautiful, practical and artistic, plus the elegant seals stamped by later generations of bibliophiles [qian money], it looks dazzling, and it is indeed a gratifying work of art.