Woodblock print

“ The cutting of a line block needs patience and care and skill, but it is not the most difficult part of print making, nor is it so hopeless an enterprise as it seems at first to one who has not tried to use the block-cutter's knife.
In Japan this work is a highly specialised craft, never undertaken by the artist himself, but carried out by skilled craftsmen who only do this part of the work of making colour prints. Even the clearing of the spaces between the cut lines is done by assistant craftsmen or craftswomen. ”

“ At the same time the printing in colour of letters and other simple devices in books from wood-blocks was done, and a book printed at St. Albans in 1486 has many coats of arms printed in this way; some of the shields having two or three different colours. [1]
About the year 1500 a method of printing woodcuts in several flat tones was invented in Germany and practised by Lucas Cranach and others. A fine print of Adam and Eve by Hans Baldung in the Victoria and Albert Museum has, besides the bold black "drawing," an over-tint printed in warm brown out of which sharp high lights are cut ”

“ Bear in mind that both sides of a line are drawn by the knife. The special power of developing the expressive form of line on both sides is a resource tending to great development of drawing in designs for wood-block prints. The line may be of varying form, changing from silhouette to pure line as may best serve to express the design. It should never be a mere diagram.
Plate VI. Reproduction of an impression (reduced) of the key-block of a Japanese print showing admirable variety in the means used to suggest form. ”

“ PRINTING ON WOOD, CANVAS, OPAL, AND TRANSPARENCIES Printing on Wood.—To print on a wood block a design to be engraved on the same presents certain difficulties. In the first place, the sensitizing solution must not be absorbed by the wood, but remain wholly on its surface; then the photo film, although thick enough to produce an image sufficiently intense to be distinctly visible in all its details, should not scale or clip away under the graver, and not interfere in any way with the work of the artist; the least touch of the graver must reach the wood and make its impression. ”

“ When cutting a new set of blocks there is another possible source of error which needs to be carefully guarded against. Most of the work in designing a new print is necessarily spent in planning and cutting the key-block, which may occupy a considerable time, especially if other work has to be carried on as well. ”

“ If one has a steady hand, the block can easily be lifted at one side to determine just where the extra pressure is needed. The block should be thoroughly rubbed with old cloth after each impression is made and occasionally sand-papered to remove any paint that may adhere to it. The first print made after sand-papering the block is liable to be a little less distinct than the others and should therefore be made upon an extra piece of the material. ”

“ There are, however, certain differences between plate-printing and block-printing which affect the essentials of art. When paper is driven into a line so as to fetch the ink out of it, the line may be of unimaginable fineness, it will print all the same; but when the paper is only pressed upon a raised line, the line must have some appreciable thickness; the wood engraving, therefore, can never—except in a tour de force—be so delicate as plate engraving. Again, not only does plate-printing excel block-printing in delicacy; it excels it also in force and depth. ”

“ No printer who uses illustrations should be without a wood engraving outfit, consisting of four to six tools, and the cunning to use it. There are many cases in which a process plate, or a chalk plate, or old wood type, can be cleaned up, altered or improved with a little handwork. Sometimes in a zinc plate the fine lines in a sky print clearly on a small run, but soon begin to round and flatten; if not essential to the design they may then be entirely cut out {231} and the run continued. In chalk plate, surfaces may be cast black and then cut into with a white line, as in the Schafhausen. ”

“ The gradations of tint in wood and steel engraving and in lithographs are dependent upon quite another principle—namely, the varying distribution of spots, patches, or lines in black ink of uniform intensity. The Woodbury print has all the detail and clearness of the photograph, together with a 643certain softness, produced by the transparency of the colouring matter, not found in the ordinary photographic print. ”

“ It was easier to transfer the letters than to draw them; easier to cut the letters for a book of twenty or thirty pages than to cut the punches, make the moulds, and cast and compose the types. The blocks having been engraved, the block-printer had the superior advantage. His blocks, like modern stereotype plates, were always ready for use. He could print a large or small edition at pleasure. And what was of much more importance, he could print more legibly from his smooth plates of wood than the amateur typographer could from his uneven surface of lead. ”

“ The principle of a print made from an engraved wood block is that the projecting parts are covered with a thin film of ink, and when the paper is lightly pressed down upon these lines it picks up the ink from the surface wherever it touches it. In the case of an engraved metal plate, the lines on which are cut in the same way and with a similar graver to that used for white line engraving on wood, the inking and printing is quite different. ”

“ Long before this wood-blocks had been cut for the purpose of printing patterns on textile fabrics, but it was only when paper came into general use, late in the fourteenth century, that the print, as we now understand it, obtained a chance of separate existence. ”

“ The amount of size in the paper is another important factor in the printing of colour. If the paper is too lightly sized the fibres will detach themselves and stick to the damp block. Or if too heavily sized the paper will not take up the colour cleanly from the block, and will look hard when dry. One very soon feels instinctively the right quality and condition of the block, colour, and paper which are essential to good printing; and to print well one must become sensitive to them. ”

“ If the pattern contains several colours the cloth is usually first printed throughout with one, then dried, re-wound and printed with the second, the same operations being- repeated until all the colours are printed.
Many modifications of block-printing have been tried from time to time, but of these only two—“tobying” and “rainbowing”—are of any practical value. The object of tobey-printing is to print the several colours of a multicolour pattern at one operation. and for this purpose a block with the whole of the pattern cut upon it, and a specially constructed “colour sieve” are employed. ”

“ A hand press will easily print a 16 by 24 poster, and if it is to be printed in three or four colors by relief printing, the cost of zinc relief plates or wood blocks would be considerable, while in the case of the lithograph it is merely the hire of the boy who cleans the stone. There is no end to the variety of effects to be got in lithography by different combinations of technic: by using, separately or in combination, pen, crayon or brush line ”

“ Some colours will be found to print more smoothly and easily than others. Yellow ochre, for instance, prints with perfect smoothness and ease, while heavier or more gritty colours tend to separate and are more difficult. In the case of a very heavy colour such as vermilion, a drop of glue solution will keep the colour smooth for printing, and less paste is necessary. But most colours will give good impressions by means of rice paste alone. It is essential, however, that only very finely ground colours of good quality should be used. ”

“ If the copy furnished is a wood-cut, steel or lithographic print, in which the lines are absolutely black on white paper or card, the negative is made direct and no drawing is necessary, unless a very great reduction is required, when it becomes necessary to make a drawing, the lines of which are made open enough to stand the necessary reduction. ”

“ The art of printing from an engraved plate is not wholly mechanical, because there are many cases in which the impression taken is not merely a flat transfer from the unmodified, hard surface. Thus, in printing woodcuts, it is customary to use what are called overlays, which are pieces of thin paper cut in peculiar shapes, accommodated to the design engraved upon the block ”

“ And wood type which is too old to print a solid black evenly, may be punched with an awl, as in the background of the Larousse Dictionary A, to reduce it to a stipple gray; or white-lined like the following portrait; or the sides may be trimmed with the graver. Rouletting can be imitated with a WOOD CUT PORTRAIT. From a French periodical, showing open white lines used to represent a tint. common graver by cutting across the line at regular intervals. Only when a series of lines has to be rou­let­ted is it nec­es­sary to have a special ins­tru­ment, which costs from $1.50 to $3. ”

“ Hogitaro Inada, for translations from the Japanese, kindly supplied by him.
CECIL SMITH.
Victoria and Albert Museum, 1913.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS [pg 4] UTAMARO.—Yedo Meibutsu Nishikiye Kosaku. “The making of colour-prints, the famous product of Yedo: after the engraver's rough engraving the design is carefully carved.” An illustration of the carving of wood-blocks fancifully represented as being done by women. From a print in the Victoria and Albert Museum. J. 5040. DIAGRAM:——Method of framing a block to prevent warping. ”

“ That if all Printers were determin'd not to print any thing till they were sure it would offend no body, there would be very little printed. ”

“ transforms old print
To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes
Of gall'ry critics by a thousand arts. ”

“ The custom of getting illustrations from painters who have little knowledge of decorative design has led to the invention of all sorts of mechanical processes in order to transfer easel-work direct to the printed page. The effect of this upon book decoration has been deadly. Process-work of this sort has gone far to kill wood-engraving; and as to its result, instead of a uniform texture of line woven as it were over the entire page, the eye is arrested by harsh patches of black or gray which show a disregard of the printed type which is little less than brutal. ”

“ Anything original that the cutter puts in, any swerving that accident or clumsiness permits him to make from the line fixed by the painter’s pen for him to follow, is a blemish, and the best woodcuts of Dürer, Holbein, Baldung, Cranach, Burgkmair and the rest of their generation have no such blemishes. They are strictly autographic: the lines that the artist’s pen has traced remain and are immortalized by the printing-press; the white spaces, also limited by his controlling will and purpose, result from the mere mechanical cutting away of blank wood that any neat-handed workman can perform. ”

“ The history of block-printing and that of pictorial engraving are necessarily linked together, for, given a pictorial art as well as a literature in a nation that has just brought into use the art of printing from engraved blocks, a picture would be executed as readily as a letter or ideographic character, and would be cut on the wood whenever the need of such an illustration of the text might chance to suggest itself. ”

“ WE WISH to supplement the preceding pages with a chapter on the technic of wood engraving, and a few words about kindred arts which are of special consequence to the illustrator-printer. The art of wood engraving I consider one of the most valuable things for the illustrator-printer to learn. True, this art is going out of use because of its tediousness; and, it must be confessed, if you wish a picture of a building in your paper, it is much more economical and you can get a better result if you make a pen drawing and send it to be photo-engraved, than if you engrave it on wood. ”

“ Hence, for the wooden part of the finer tools, for every thing that requires strength, beauty, and polish in timber, there is nothing equal to it. There is one purpose for which box, and box alone, is properly adapted, and that is the forming of wood-cuts, for scientific or other illustrations in books. These reduce the price considerably in the first engraving, and also in the printing; while the wood-cut in box admits of as high and sharp a finish as any metal, and takes the ink much better. ”

“ Articles in plain white wood can be bought almost anywhere nowadays. Pen-trays, letter-racks, easels, paper-knives, photograph-frames, watch-cases, needle-books, portfolios, glove-boxes, fans, silk-winders—there is no end to the variety which can be had, and had at a very moderate price. Now, any girl or boy among you with a paint-box and a little taste for drawing, can make a really pretty gift by decorating some one of these wooden things, either in color or with pen drawings in brown or black. The pattern need by no means be elaborate. ”

“ In the portfolios of collectors of works of art of the sixteenth century we frequently meet with very interesting examples of printing in chiaro-oscuro, as it was called, by means of successive impressions of engraved wood-blocks. Sometimes two or three blocks were used, sometimes six or eight, in all cases with the intention of reproducing the appearance of a tinted water-colour drawing or an oil-painting. ”