Engraver

“ The engraver is to remember that the production is to be an engraving and not a drawing; that it is to have the character of an engraving—an engraving manifest and not an imitation of another drawing, half-tone, or any other process. Let the dependence be on the engraving tools rather than the pencil. As far as possible draw direct on to the wood. ”

“ Stone engraving is the art of countries possessing marble and gems; wood engraving, of countries overgrown with forest; metal engraving, of countries possessing treasures of silver and gold. And the style of a stone engraver is formed on pillars and pyramids; the style of a wood engraver under the eaves of larch cottages; the style of a metal engraver in the treasuries of kings. Do you suppose I could rightly explain to you the value of a single touch on brass by Finiguerra, or on box by Bewick, [Pg 35] unless I had grasp of the great laws of climate and country ”

“ I shall speak only of wood and metal engraving. But there is one circumstance in stone engraving which it is necessary to observe in connection with the other two branches of the art.
The great difficulty for a primitive engraver is to make his scratch deep enough to be visible. Visibility is quite as essential to your fame as permanence; and if you have only your furrow to depend on, the engraved tablet, at certain times of day, will be illegible, and passed without notice. ”

“ Many regard this plate as the greatest engraving of the century. In a manner typical of those pomp-loving times, the eminent churchman is represented amidst columns and sweeping draperies. Here, indeed, we have the last word of technical resourcefulness in expanses of gorgeous silks and delicate laces, and many other textures and substances. If one should feel that all this elaboration of the setting distracts the attention from the portrait itself, he must blame the epoch and the painter whose design the engraver needs must follow. ”

“ It is almost impossible to appreciate the true value of the engraver's work without some consideration of the labour it entails. Each one of the multitudinous lines of an engraving is cut with a definite purpose and deliberate care, and may be operated upon again and again to increase the depth or width in various places. Even the dots of a stipple are not made in that aimless fashion which their appearance might at first suggest. ”

“ The splendid design has suffered not only from the feebleness of the engraving, but also from the florid manner in which the engraver has exaggerated some of the decorative details and added others.... ”

“ In the breadth of his interests, in the variety of his subjects, and in his sympathy with the special movements of his age, he was as an engraver more characteristic of the civilization in which he lived than any other of the Little Masters who gave their attention to wood-engraving. ”

“ What we want is to get nearest to the artist himself with the least amount of interpretation or intermediation on the part of the engraver. Is engraving on copper to be reproduced, we want a facsimile if possible, and not a rendering into something which is supposed to be the orthodox utterance of wood-engraving. ”

“ The standard of the engraver’s craft was permanently raised. The engravers’ names now became known; and sometimes the engraver received hardly less admiration for his skill in technique than the artist for his power of design.
Other distinguished artists united with Dürer and the designers of Maximilian’s works in making this period of wood-engraving the most illustrious in the German practice of the art. ”

“ He is called, not without justice, the father of the true art of engraving in wood. The history of the art in the older time is concerned mainly with the designer and the ideas which he endeavored to convey, and only slightly with the engraver whom he employed for the mechanical work of cutting the block. In the modern art the engraver holds a more prominent position, because he is no longer restricted to a servile following of the designer’s work, line for line, but has an opportunity to show his own artistic powers. ”

“ It is true that the addition of hand engraving can be resorted to in the case of the process block, and lights and other varieties of tone and form introduced, but this can only be done on blocks of very fine texture, and the cost of reproduction is greatly increased by the introduction of such handwork by the engraver. ”

“ As schemes of dramatic decoration they are scarcely to be surpassed and have rarely been equalled; and the time is not far distant when the sheets which brought to artist and engraver the pittance of a mechanic, and were sold for a vile price in the streets of Yedo, Osaka and Kyoto will rank in the estimation of the collector with the masterpieces of the engraver's art. ”

“ The subtle continuity of thought, from the first conception to the finished plate, which we prize in original engraving, is necessarily destroyed in such collaboration, but the engraver, working exclusively on the copper plate, is able infinitely to vary and develop the resources of the process by dint of practice. ”

“ About this time someone had been good enough to inform me that all black and white artists are in the habit of engraving their own work, and, religiously believing this, I duly provided myself with some engraving tools, bought some boxwood, a jeweller's eye-glass, and a sand bag, without which no engraver's table can be said to be complete. ”

“ Later in the century (there is no need to go into specific detail here) calendered and coated papers were introduced, and wood engraving on these glossy papers became a medium that could reproduce wash drawings, crayon drawings, pencil drawings, and oil paintings so faithfully that all the original textures were apparent. [30] The engraver, concerned entirely with accurate reproduction, became little more than a mechanic who rendered pictures drawn on the blocks by an artist. ”

“ The illustration of the engraver on wood which appears in the same Book of Trades puts before us a man in a richer dress, plainly a workman of higher grade than the stencil painter. He seems to be tracing outlines on the block. The technical accessories about this engraver are the same as those in use at this day—the graver, the whetstone, and, possibly, a water globe lens in the corner near the window casement.29 p095
Playing cards and engraving on wood bear to each other a curious relation. ”

“ The means at his disposal were lines and dots, which, varying in their thickness and proximity, expressed dark or light passages in the scheme of light and shade of the original. It will readily be understood how such interpretations would vary. An engraver with fine art instincts would produce a result as distinct in character as an engraving as was the original as a painting or drawing, and engravings were sought after as works of art, and treasured for their artistic qualities. ”

“ Yet the aim of the modern engraver has always been, while pushing the capability of his own art to the farthermost limit, to retain throughout the individual and personal qualities of the master whose work is translated on the plate. ”

“ The application of hand engraving to photo-mechanical work has been chiefly due to American process workers, who applied the technique of the wood engraver's art to the amplification of their half tone blocks. ”

“ But the fact that this and the following lecture are on the subject of design in engraving, implies of course that in the work we have to examine, it was often the engraver himself who designed, and as often the artist who engraved.
And you will observe that the only engravings which bear imperishable value are, indeed, in this kind. It is true that, in wood-cutting, both Dürer and Holbein, as in our own days Leech and Tenniel, have workmen under them who can do all they want. But in metal cutting it is not so. ”

“ Although there has been much dispute about the matter, it must now be acknowledged that the artists themselves did not ordinarily engrave their designs, but left the actual cutting of the block to the professional workmen; at most they only occasionally corrected the lines after the engraver had cut them. The works of Maximilian employed a number of these engravers, who practised the art only as a craft ”

“ Old or modern wood-engraving as a mode of reproducing designs in facsimile is valuable, but none of the artistic merit they may possess is due to the engraver; while the artistic merit shown in the new style of wood-engraving, as an art of design in white line, belongs wholly to the engraver. It results from this that white line is the peculiar province of wood-engraving, considered as an art ”

“ The work which was produced by this method in great quantities was in the mass not valuable either for the art shown in the design or for the skill of the engraver, but derived its interest and popularity from qualities which have little connection with fine art. ”

“ The engraver has incised his outlines upon the plate—probably unbeaten copper or some even softer metal—and for his shading has employed a system of delicate strokes, laid close to one another and overlaid with two, and, at times, three, sets of cross-hatching. Such engravings, when printed, as is usually the case, in a greenish or grayish ink, give a result similar to a [Pg 60] wash drawing. In the Broad Manner the style of engraving is based upon that of pen drawing, with open, diagonal shade strokes and without cross-hatching. ”

“ In consequence of the fineness and number of his productions Cousin must be considered the principal French engraver of the century; and he undoubtedly deserves a high rank among the artists of talent, in distinction from the artists of genius, who have practised wood-engraving. ”

“ The new method of reproducing artists’ work by means of lines first conceived and arranged by the engraver requires, besides skill of hand, qualities of mind—perception and origination, and the judgment that results from cultivated taste. ”

“ As many days will be given to the production of a good wood-engraving, as hours are needed to produce a good process block. The results obtained by a first-class wood-engraver on the one hand, on the other by the first-class mechanical reproduction which is always watched by a first-class man, may be so close as to be indistinguishable. ”

“ In support of the opinion which we before indirectly expressed, that the practice of taking impressions from engraved plates of metal might well be a kind of fortuitous result of a mere professional tradition incidental to the goldsmith’s art, we may remark that most of the engravings which have{325} been handed down to us as belonging to the era fixed upon for the invention of engraving, are the work of Italian goldsmith-engravers. ”

“ CHAPTER III METAL ENGRAVING—THE INVENTION—EARLY ENGRAVERS—NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS—A PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
"The influence of the graver is so great and extensive that its productions have constantly been the delight of all countries of the world and of all seasons of life."
Metal Engraving—The Invention.—The engraving of metal plates for pictorial reproduction was a direct development of ornamental engraving. The Italian Niello work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was chiefly applied to the embellishment of metal ornaments and utensils with elaborate engravings. ”

“ When all the parts are separated and placed in the hands of different engravers each man has thus a sort of key-note to guide him in the execution of his portion, and it should be his business to imitate and follow with care the colour and texture of the small pieces of engraving which he finds already done at the edge of his part of the block where it joins the rest of the design. ”

“ When the gloss has been taken from silk, it may be restored by applying the filtered mucilage of gum tragacanth; stretching it upon a frame to dry. Ribbons are glossed with isinglass. Lemon juice is used to brighten scarlet spots, after they have been cleaned.
SEAL ENGRAVING. The art of engraving gems is one of extreme nicety. The stone having received its desired form from the lapidary, the engraver fixes it by cement to the end of a wooden handle, and then draws the outline of his subject, with a brass needle or a diamond, upon its smooth surface. ”

“ However, in the very short period [Pg 41] since mechanical reproduction has been introduced, those wood-engravers who really are artists have been doing better work, because they can now engrave, in their own fashion, the blocks they want to. The art of wood-engraving has progressed if the trade has languished. ”

“ For in truth all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage, from the last finish of the gem-engraver blowing away the last particle of invisible dust, back to the earliest divination of [20] the finished work to be, lying somewhere, according to Michelangelo's fancy, in the rough-hewn block of stone. ”

“ At the end of the seventeenth century the art of wood-engraving reached its lowest ebb. There were a few tolerably good mechanical engravers on the Continent, who were chiefly employed in the manufacture of ornaments for cards, and head and tail pieces for books and ballads, but nearly all the woodcuts we meet with in English books are of the most childish character. ”

“ It is more probable that the art began in the workshops of the goldsmiths, who were so skilled in engraving upon metal that impressions of much artistic value have been taken from work executed by them in the twelfth century, showing that they really were engravers obliged to remain goldsmiths, because the art of printing from metal plates was unknown. ”

“ In the complete styles of engraving, stipple, line, and mezzotint, although American engravers are little known out of their own country—a large enough328 field, however, in which to exercise their talents—some good work has also been done ”

“ Every lover of Japanese woodcuts will recognise that much of the charm of the more prized impressions has been contributed by the artistic feeling of the printer after the designer and engraver had done their work.
If we are to judge Japanese engraving by the effects produced, it is hard to assign its due place in the xylographic art of the world, on account of the imperfect evolution of the art it seeks to express. The Japanese painter clings to many a useless convention that has no
Fig. 37—Reduced from a woodcut in the European style, published in the Myako no hana (1888) . ”