This set of hand-carved wooden blocks features Kuomingtang (Chinese Nationalist Party) symbols and flags. They were previously used in Kuon Ying Press(冠英印务局), a printing shop based in Kampar—a town in Perak, Malaysia. Kampar was a major tin-mining town in the Malay Peninsula in the late 19th and early 20th century, with large numbers of Chinese immigrants settling in Kampar to work in the tin-mining industry. Before the Second World War, the overseas Chinese community pledged their loyalty to China and to the Nationalist government in power then. Before the advent of computers, mass printing of text, logos and patterns was accomplished by carving characters and images onto pieces of wooden blocks. Ink was applied to these blocks before they were pressed onto printing surfaces or materials to create one print. Kuon Ying Press was established in the 1920s and printed a variety of materials ranging from cinema tickets to wedding invitation cards for the local community. Kuon Ying Press also served as a half-way house for immigrants from the founder’s hometown in China (Heshan, Guangdong) who stayed at the shop while they search for jobs in Malaya. The shop remained in operation during the Japanese Occupation and might have printed for the Japanese army as well.
