Tibet has a long printing tradition, and it is one of the few places where books are still produced by hand from carved wooden blocks. The technique arrived with Buddhism from India and China and was refined in the great monasteries, several of which maintained printing houses that supplied the whole plateau with sutras, commentaries and ritual texts.
Cutting and printing
A text is first written out by a calligrapher, then pasted face down onto a smoothed plank of hardwood and carved away by a block cutter so that the characters stand in relief. Cutting a single block is slow, precise work and a large scripture may run to hundreds of blocks. Printing is done by two people: one inks the block with a roller or a padded brush, the other lays a sheet of paper over it and rubs it evenly with a hand tool, then peels the sheet off in one movement. The finished sheets are dried, trimmed and bound in the traditional Tibetan loose-leaf format between wooden boards, often wrapped in cloth.
Tibetan paper
The paper used is not wood pulp. It is made from the bark of the daphne plant, from the root of a local shrub, and sometimes with added fibres, cooked, beaten to a pulp, and formed sheet by sheet in a mould. The result is a paper that is thick, slightly rough and remarkably strong and insect-resistant, which is why Tibetan books survive for centuries in conditions that would destroy ordinary paper. Making it is a domestic craft, traditionally carried out in villages rather than factories, and families still make sheets by hand for monasteries and for craft sales.
Where to see it
Historic printing houses exist at several of the large monasteries, where blocks are stored in long galleries and visitors can watch printing during working hours. Smaller workshops and craft centres in Lhasa and the surrounding villages demonstrate both printing and paper making, and are usually happy to let you try inking a block yourself. Finished prints, loose-leaf texts, prayer flags and handmade paper notebooks are sold at these workshops and around Barkhor.
Buying and practical notes
Handmade paper and genuine block prints are worth buying because they are difficult to find elsewhere and travel well. Loose-leaf texts and single printed sheets are inexpensive; complete volumes are not. Prayer flags printed from old blocks are a common and cheap purchase. Keep finished paper away from damp, and note that religious printed material should be treated with some care in Tibetan culture - do not use pages as wrapping or discard them casually in public.
