Printmaking

“ It took some time, however, to turn the printer into the manufacturer or tradesman pure and simple. Nothing is more striking than the high artistic character of the early printed books. The invention of printing, coming as it did when the illuminated MSS. had reached the period of its greatest glory and perfection, with the artistic traditions of fifteen centuries poured, as it were, into its lap, filling its founts with beautiful lettering, and guiding the pencil of its designers with a still unbroken sense of fitness and perfect adaptability ”

“ A more recent and quite important development of this art is photo-lithography, which will be more fully considered under photography.
Many collateral branches of the printing art are interesting in their development, such as calico printing, the printing of wall papers, of oil cloth, printing for the blind, book binding, type founding, and folding and addressing machines, but lack of space forbids more than a casual mention.
Printing is perhaps the greatest of all the arts of civilization, and the libraries and newspapers of the Nineteenth Century attest its value. ”

“ But knowledge, as distinguished from acquaintance, gives us a very different conception of a painting, or a piece of sculpture, or an example of any form of art, and reveals to us new beauties. So it is in printing. We cannot do good color printing unless we understand color as an artist understands it; we cannot get the best results from a halftone engraving unless we understand tone, light and103 shade, and values, as an artist understands them. We are not sure of our ground with regard to a page of plain type matter unless we know something conclusive about the fundamentals of art. ”

“ The printer's work and the painter's art exactly reverse their processes, as their motives are opposed; but they must both work with the same tools, measurably. Everything with the painter is plastic, except his art. Everything is immobile with the printer, except his art; and of that he hopes to employ only so much as will gild the prosaic commercialism of the motive he must express. The chief principles and tenets of art are all applicable to the craft of printing, in some degree. ”

“ Cameron. "A printer does and should take pride in the looks of his page. The beauty of a book is quite an element in its production. [98] After the type has been set up and corrected, and the proof paged, the next consideration is the size of the paper to be used, the quality, the texture. The width of the margins, the clearness or brilliancy of the text, the appearance and flexibility of the binding all have to do with the artistic result which is, or should be, the aim of every publisher. ”

“ A knowledge of paper in this thorough sense is even more desirable if a printer presumes to arrogate to himself the title and qualities of an artist. It is scarcely too radical to assert that the esthetics of printing depend for exemplification more upon paper than upon typography. It has been said that type, ink, and paper go to the making of good printing. This formula may be reversed and made to read paper, ink, and type, since so much of the effect of decorative printing depends upon the paper and the ink. ”

“ Printing, as a means of making records and of embodying and illustrating thought, has given us the wide field of literature on design. But in the making of books as an application of design, and in the making of all other forms of printed matter, printers since Gutenberg have been influenced by relatively few of the many distinct periods through which art has come. ”

“ Printers are not students, in the sense that painters, etchers, engravers, illustrators, and even photographers, are students. Printers (the progressive ones) have in recent years become close observers and good imitators, but there are few who have attempted to qualify themselves101 for original work by thorough study of those principles of graphic art that vitally control printing. The artist, in any other line than printing, comes to the practice of his art only after prolonged study and mastery of the principles and the laws governing it. Not so with the printer. ”

“ Type is type, speaking somewhat loosely, and, whatever the crotchet a consumer of printing may get into his head it is not likely to cost more than about so much a pound. It is otherwise with paper, and generally it is more the color, texture, and appearance the patron wishes than the intrinsic value, and the printer must make a choice that shall satisfy the artistic exigencies of the case, as well as consider its financial aspects. One paper may be unsuited for a particular piece of work, and another of the same tint, weight, and price may be exactly suitable ”

“ Yet it is noted that whenever an artist is able to attract favorable attention through the exercise of talents markedly his own, he is at once credited with a style that is distinctively and peculiarly his.96 It is quite fair and just therefore to consider that style in printing means that quality of beauty or distinction which is to be directly referred to the printer, rather than those meritorious qualities that owe their existence to careful following of established rules and principles, concerning which all printers have, or may have, a working knowledge. ”

“ A limited number of specially prepared printed books can likewise be illuminated. But the greater the number of copies, the less labour may be spent on each one, and the more their illumination tends to be simple “rubrication”—adding coloured capitals, flourishes, and the like (see p. 127) . And, if a large edition is to be decorated, the printer must be content to use black, or black and red, in woodcut or “process” work (see pp. 365, 372) .
Illumination proper may be defined as the decoration by hand, in bright gold or colours, of writing or printing. ”

“ To no one, probably, is the present advanced stage of Printing more indebted than to the last-named nobleman. With a natural talent for mechanical invention which no difficulty could subdue, he applied his enlightened mind with persevering ardour to a variety of useful objects, especially to the improvement of Printing. [9] The result was not only the production of the most complete Printing Press then known, together with a variety of collateral improvements, but the increasing, if not originating, that impulse which has since carried this important branch of art so near to perfection. ”

“ Printers will accomplish the most in booklet printing, as in other branches of the craft, if they live in an artistic atmosphere. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great English painter, said: “The more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention.” That is the reason painters haunt Italy and other art centers where the works of the old masters are accessible. The printer should take journals such as The American Printer, devoted to the art of typography ”

“ Principles and rules of art for the printer's guidance must be more mobile than can be permitted for the guidance of the painter, the draughtsman, the engraver, or the sculptor, because the medium for the expression of the printer's conception is so nearly immobile. ”

“ Lithography is the most scientific and the most flexible of all methods of printing. It can imitate fairly, and it often reproduces with accuracy, a line engraving on steel, a drawing in crayon, the manuscript of a penman, or the painting in oil of an artist. By the aid of photography, it can repeat, in an enlarged or diminished size, any kind of printed work. It has many advantages over copper-plate and xylography. For some kinds of work, like autograph letters and rude diagrams, engraving is unnecessary ”

“ The application of lithography for purposes of coloured printing or chromo-lithography in the last fifteen years, has done much to awaken the attention of the artist and the lovers of art to the treasures mouldering in our libraries and museums; by its aid we have been enabled to obtain copies and specimens of illuminated printing, almost perfect facsimiles of the originals. It has stimulated the artist to pursue a new track for his operations; it has infused a corresponding taste in the public mind for ornamental improvement, which has manifested itself in every branch of manufacture. ”

“ If a publisher wished to make a book beautiful he put in plates. If he wanted to make it more beautiful he put in more or larger plates. If he wanted to make it a real triumph of beauty he engraved the whole book, letterpress and all, as in the case of Sturt’s Prayer Books and Pine’s Horace. That a printer by the selection and arrangement of type, by good presswork and the use of pretty capitals and tailpieces, could make a book charming to eye and hand, without any help from an illustrator—such an idea as this had nearly perished. ”

“ The feature which gives to typography its precedence in usefulness over all other branches of the graphic arts is not so much its superior adaptation to impression as its superior facility for combining letters. Its merit is in the mobility of its types and their construction for combination. Printing is Typography. The printing which disseminates knowledge is not the art that makes prints or pictures; it is, as Bernard has defined it, “the art that makes books.” ”

“ There is no claim put forward for silversmiths that their work is all artistic; the chief part of it is very manifestly craftsmanship, yet examples that are true art constantly appear. The same is true of wood carving, of repoussé work in metals, and of many crafts. It may be true of printing, and will be when printers themselves become qualified to view their craftsmanship from the point of view of the artist, and feel for it that devotion which is always the recognizable controlling motive of artists in other graphic arts, and in those crafts that verge upon the graphic arts. ”

“ It is understood that it is the gentle but constant influence that moulds our habits and lives the more readily and lastingly. If therefore it is possible for us to conceive that the printed page of a book may illustrate and enforce several of the more elemental and important principles underlying graphic art, we may thereby realize that printing may readily be employed in the character of a very powerful art educator, if because of certain inalienable limitations it must be denied full recognition as a member of the sisterhood of arts. ”

“ It assuredly requires a new and a different comprehension of the terms of art, and a distinctly varied comprehension of the word art itself. It has ever been a stumbling block to printers that the word art as applied to their craft must be given a more limited significance than is given it in its usual acceptance. If we can come at some intelligible appreciation of what we mean by art in printing the way will be opened for the application of that motive to the work of the presses. ”

“ The time has arrived when eminence in printing means much more than good work along existing lines. It means a radical departure and the full recognition of the power and value of art in printing. We have been rather hesitant in accepting this word, art, as applying legitimately to printing, and we have been hesitating merely because we have seen the term so freely and ignorantly applied to work that merited no better name than archaic ”

“ Printing, then, for our purpose, may be considered as the art of making books by means of movable types. Now, as all books not primarily intended as picture-books consist principally of types composed to form letterpress, it is of the first importance that the letter used should be fine in form; especially as no more time is occupied, or cost incurred, in casting, setting, or printing beautiful letters than in the same operations with ugly ones. ”

“ Nothing in the history of printing is so remarkable as the beauty of almost its first efforts. Other notes are -
4. The absence of figures at the top of the pages, and of signatures at the foot. The thickness and solidity of the paper, the absence of the printer's name, of the date, and of the name of the town where the press stood, and the abundance of crabbed abbreviations, are all marks, more or less trustworthy, of the antiquity of books. It must not be supposed that all books published, let us say before 1500, are rare, or deserve the notice of the collector. ”

“ Art demands that the print be a part of the paper upon which it is impressed, much as the plant is a part of the earth in which its roots are buried, and utility demands that the print shall be strong and clear that reading may be made easy. The artist-printer lessens the contrast between print and paper by printing with gray ink on gray stock, brown ink on light brown stock, and so forth. The utility printer gets the maximum of contrast by printing with black ink on white stock. ”

“ There is a popular notion that the so-called inventions of paper and xylographic printing were gladly welcomed by men of letters, and that the new fabric and the new art were immediately pressed into service. The facts about to be presented in succeeding chapters will lead to a different conclusion. We shall see that the makers of playing cards and of image prints were the men who first made extended use of printing, and that self-taught and unprofessional copyists were the men who gave encouragement to the manufacture of paper. ”