The origin of "imitation Song style": it is directly imitated from the engraving fonts of Song Dynasty books

Today’s book printing and various text printing fonts are extremely rich, and the Song Dynasty style can no longer dominate the world; but its dignified and elegant appearance still makes people who have used or seen this style People who create fonts are nostalgic and unforgettable.

Nowadays, when typing on a computer, you can also choose a font that imitates Song Dynasty. Once upon a time, this font was very popular and occupied the Chinese people's vision on slogans, banners, book pages, and movie subtitles. So, when was this font created and what is its origin?

Imitation Song

The name Imitation Song is of course modeled on the style of the Song Dynasty, but it is not entirely modeled after a certain scribe or calligrapher in the Song Dynasty. , celebrity fonts, but directly imitated the engraving fonts of Song Dynasty books. So, why should we imitate the Song Dynasty instead of going forward and imitating the Sui and Tang Dynasties, or going backward and imitating the Ming and Qing Dynasties? When imitating the Sui and Tang dynasties, there were no large-scale woodblock printing of books, and the sample selection of fonts was obviously insufficient; imitating the Ming and Qing dynasties is not as good as directly imitating the Song Dynasty, because most of the woodblock fonts in the Ming and Qing dynasties imitated the Song Dynasty, or were indirectly derived from the Song dynasty book fonts. create. Of course, the trend of imitating the Song Dynasty also comes from the rarity of the Song version of the book itself.

One page of the Song edition is hard to find, and it 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. This person started the practice of judging the price of Song edition books based on their pages. As a result, Song-printed books became an extremely expensive luxury item in the Chinese cultural system.

When the social trend of pricing gold in Song Dynasty books by page gradually became popular, the copying of Song Dynasty books also began to rise. People began to tend toward completely complete reproductions, which required lifelikeness down to the smallest detail, and required uncompromising physical resemblance and smooth spiritual resemblance. This artistic system of copying was transformed into a pure copying technique. In the printing process of the Ming and Qing dynasties and even into the Republic of China, the special engraving category of shadow and Song Dynasty appeared.

In fact, we started from the Shadow Song craftsmanship of those who had deliberately imitated the Song Dynasty for two to three hundred years, and got inspiration from it. In the late Qing Dynasty, Ding Fuzhi and Ding San, who were the presidents of Xiling Seal Society The brothers decided to collect Song edition books, imitate them themselves, engrave movable type, and then make impositions for printing. By 1916, this kind of regular script was designed by the two brothers. This kind of font was unified and modified to imitate Ou Ti (Ouyang Xun's calligraphy style). Since the prototypes of the fonts were all from Song Dynasty books, they transformed this font into The temporary name is Fake Song Dynasty. Later, the Ding brothers added a modifier of "Juzhen" in front of "Imitation Song Dynasty" and called it "Juzhen Imitation Song Dynasty". "Juzhen" means movable type printing. This name originated from the title of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty. He also thought that movable type was indecent and replaced it with "Juzhen". "Juzhen" means to gather the characters to print the rare copies.

In 1920, Juzhen’s imitation Song font was approved by the Communist Party of China, becoming China’s first nationally recognized font patent. In 1921, Zhonghua Book Company merged with the Ding brothers' Juzhen Imitation Song Seal Book Company, and officially acquired the minted No. 1, No. 2, No. 4, No. 3, and No. 3 long-body inscriptions with various European Song characters. Eight types of copper molded typefaces, including number one, number one, number three, number five, number one, number four, long-body inserts, long and short-body characters, and Xixia fonts have been successively engraved. Immediately afterwards, Zhonghua Book Company printed the "Four Preparations" large-scale ancient book series in Juzhen imitation Song style. The complete series reached 113.05 million volumes, divided into 2,500 volumes; the advent of this series , further expanding the social influence and brand value of Juzhen imitation Song Dynasty. Subsequently, Juzhen's various books, documents, and business cards printed in imitation of the Song Dynasty typeface gradually became popular in major cities in China. In 1929, Chung Hwa Book Company also exported this patent to Tsuda Sanseido in Nagoya, Japan. After that, Chinese books in various parts of Southeast Asia began to be printed with imitation Song fonts.

Of course, Juzhen Fake Songti is not the only one that develops imitation Songti, but it cannot compete with it regardless of its technological maturity or application scale. Until the beginning of the last century, before laser phototypesetting of books, printing books with imitation Song fonts was still an unchanging rule. Today's book printing and various text printing fonts are extremely rich, and Song Dynasty can no longer dominate the world; but its dignified and elegant appearance still makes people who have used or seen this font feel nostalgic and nostalgic. memorable.