![]() ![]() For the print on the right, I used a paper “frisket” to effectively mask off the background (it’s not perfectly done, as you can see on the right edge, but I hope you get the basic idea). Take a look at the two prints above and see if you can spot the difference and figure out how that was done… The print on the left displays the entire block’s illustration - the elephant and the quasi-decorative border. Two printings from of the same block: one the whole block (on left) and the other with the background masked out by a paper frisket (on right). Even if a mirror, or reverse-view guide-image was used, imagine how much harder this would make the cutting! Hands-on work like this project really brought home the skill of the wood-cutters to all of us in the class - and also the sheer level of physical effort needed to engrave the block - and not obliterate the image by chiseling out too large a gouge (my elephant almost lost an eye that way, as you can perhaps see if you look closely). This doesn’t really matter in an illustration like this, except perhaps for a more aesthetic effect one way or the other, but imagine if the block depicted an actual landscape scene, a building, or included some lettering! The wood-engraver would have to work “in reverse” in order for the actual print to have an accurate orientation. “Wood-engraved” block (actually a lino-cut block) at right, and trial print made from it (at left): note the black-white contrast and the “mirror images.”ĭo you notice anything fundamentally different about the block and the print-out made from it? The print image is reversed. In the hands of a real master wood-engraver, like Thomas Bewick or the Dalziels, the effect can be highly dramatic! Wood-engravings tend to accentuate black colors, as you can see in this crude example. Vestiges of these lines have been obscured by the printer’s ink now, though.) When the block is inked, these chiseled-away away sections - recessed below the printing surface - remain uninked and so appear as white space in the actual print - and also on the block itself, as you can see. (A version of the illustration had been made on the block as a guide for us to follow - as is always the case in wood engraving - but the goal was for us to leave the lines more or less intact and carve away the rest the idea being that the printed surface would then replicate the guide illustration. ![]() As you can see, parts of the block were cut away (using the burin), leaving the outline of the elephant illustration on the original level of the block’s surface. Let’s take a look at the faux wood-engraving I made (with apologies for the lack of artistry or wood-engraving skills) and a trial printing of it. (Full disclosure: we actually used linoleum blocks, rather than hardwood, in the interests of conservation and safety, and zinc plates rather than a copper ones, in the interests of economy (copper is expensive!), but the basic processes used are still the same in the respective media.) It’s another to wield these tools with your hands and feel how differently an engraving tool interacts with the wood or metal medium as it glides relatively smoothly through a soft metal surface - the incised engraved lines which will provide the basis of the intaglio engraving - compared with the sort of jabbing motion made by a chisel-like burin as you try to scoop out bits of the non-printing area on a piece of hardwood. It’s one thing to read about how a burin (a sharp, chisel-like tool used in wood-engravings) leaves characteristically different traces on a wood-engraved block than those made by a metal engraving graver on a copper or steel plate (most which can usually be seen only under magnification). (Definitely not a leisurely “vacation”!) And in the process of putting reading into practice, we did learn a lot about the differences between these illustration processes (and other processes) that were widely used in books for both children and grown-ups from the earliest days of printing into the mid-eighteenth century (when Thomas Bewick began executing wood-engravings) and on into the early twentieth century, when manual illustration processes became supplanted by process-printing and photo-mechanical work. But in a recent class on “ Book Illustration Processes” at “ Rare Book School,” a program held each summer at the University of Virginia’s main Charlottesville campus, not far from the Thomas Jefferson-designed “Lawn” and Academic Village, we did get to make wood-engravings, metal-cut engravings, and drypoints, as a complement to five days of 8:30 am to 5 pm classes, lectures, and presentations, and lots of scholarly reading. No, this is notthe Cotsen Blog’s April Fool’s Day posting! And the classwork was definitely not quite as simple as “making pictures” either. Original wood-engraved block used to print upper wrapper of McLoughlin Brothers’ “Little Pet’s Picture Alphabet” (ca.
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