Private Wooden Movable Type and Printing Devices

These are wooden movable type and various printing devices used for privately produced publications. The wooden type was used mainly to print private publications from the reign of King Sunjo of Joseon through to the Japanese colonial period; there is no record of who first made the type or when. A total of nineteen boxes of type survive: eighteen contain medium-sized characters, and the remaining box contains large and small characters. The type was made with rather crude craftsmanship. It bears various marks recording that it was carried from place to place and used to print material for a fee, together with notes identifying the ganin — the place of printing — clear evidence that the type was privately owned. A variety of books printed with this type survive alongside it, including one bearing a record showing it was printed in 1919. Among the surviving printing devices are two carving knives, five awls, two fretsaws, seven sets of bamboo tongs, one ink brush, one ink block and one wicker case, along with a few individual printed sheets. According to a record in the Munheon Boguk describing the origin of this type, it had been kept by someone in Chungcheong-do before being acquired by the National Library in 1942. It is thought to have originally been made in the Honam region and to have served the printing needs of ordinary people there.

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Where it is

Region

Seocho-gu, Seoul

Designation

Treasure · 보물