Cao Ou’s album displayed at the BL

Muban Award artist Cao Ou’s new woodblock prints album, Re-imagining Classic Stories (古事新绘集) is displayed at British Library’s Treasure Gallery Art of the Books section.

Re-imagining Classic Stories is a set of ten prints, depicting scenes from the following Chinese literary classics: Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan 水浒传), Journey to the West (Xiyou ji 西游记)，The Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen 封神榜), The Adventures of the Mad Monk Ji Gong (济公全传), The Legend of White Snake (白蛇传) and The Legend of Zhong Kui (钟馗传).

Cao Ou spent nine months drawing, cutting and printing this work. The prints were made using the douban shuiyin 饾版套色木刻水印 woodblock printing technique, using linden wood and pear wood. Each print has used approximately 50blocks, with a total of more than 500 blocks for the complete set of ten prints.