Woodblock printing

“ A batch of sheets of printing paper, prepared and damped as described in Chapter V, lies between boards just beyond the block. The pad lies close to the block at the right on oily paper pinned to the table. To the right also are a dish or plate on which a little ink is spread, the printing brush (broad for the key-block) , a saucer containing fresh paste, a bowl of water, a small sponge, and a cloth. Nothing else is needed, and it is best to keep the table clear of unnecessary pots or colour bottles. ”

“ It is in this liability to warp that types of wood fail most signally. It is not enough that they can be made to serve for one experiment; the only demonstration of practicability that a printer can accept is that of repeated distribution and recomposition, a feat which has never been done. That types of wood were tried by the inventor of typography is probable; that single leaves were printed, experimentally, is possible; but the statement that any printer used them repeatedly in the printing of books, cannot be admitted. No book was ever printed in Europe with small types of wood. ”

“ Although no paper has hitherto been found that will take so perfect an impression from colour-blocks as the long-fibred Japanese paper, yet it should be the aim of all craftsmen to become independent of foreign materials as far as possible. There is no doubt that [Pg 55] our paper-makers should be able to produce a paper of good quality sufficiently absorbent to take colour from the wet block and yet tough enough to bear handling when slightly damp.
If a short-fibred paper is made without size, it comes to pieces when it is damped for printing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On a merely superficial acquaintance the Japanese craft of block-printing may appear to be no more than a primitive though delicate form of colour reproduction, which modern mechanical methods have long superseded, even in the land of its invention; and that to study so limited a mode of expression would be hardly of any practical value to an artist. ”

“ The flat surface of the bamboo-sheath is on the under side of the pad when the handle is uppermost. The ribbed bamboo-sheath is impervious to the dampness of the paper in printing, and the pad may be used to rub and press directly on the back of the damp paper as it lies on the block without any protective backing sheet. The collotype reproduction facing page 12 shows the shape and character of the baren.
Japanese printing pads may be obtained from some of the artists' colour-men, or from Japan through various agencies. They are by far the best instrument for the purpose. ”

“ It is not necessary to provide an [Pg 41] entire block for each patch of colour, but only the extent of surface required for each coloured portion of the print, as well as for its pair of register marks. Patches of different colour that are not adjacent to one another on the design of the print may be cut on the same block, provided they are not too close for free colouring of the block in printing. Each block also may be cut on both sides, so that there is considerable scope for economy in the arranging and planning of the colour blocks. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Copies of two immense woodcuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, of Biblical subjects, seem to have been [Pg xii] seems to cramp the hand and injure the eyes of all but the most gifted draughtsmen. It is desirable to cultivate the ability to seize and record the "map-form" of any object rapidly and correctly. Some practice in elementary colour-printing would certainly be of general usefulness, and simpler exercises may be contrived by cutting out with scissors and laying down shapes in black or coloured papers unaided by any pattern. ”

“ Gutenberg, Schœffer, Zell, Mentel and many early printers of France and Italy neglected engraving on wood.404 It may be that this neglect originated in the difficulties of printing types and wood-cuts together,405 or in a despisal of the rude productions of the block-printers,406 and in the intention of the p536 typographers to make emphatic the superiority of their branch. Wood-cuts were freely used by typographers in the heart of Germany and in the Netherlands, the districts where we find the earliest notices of block-printing, but they are generally of a low order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Outside its safe limitations the technical difficulties are increased, and one is led to make compromises that strain the [Pg 85] proper resources of block printing and are of doubtful advantage.
The temptation to use colour with the key-block comes when one attempts to use the key-block for rendering light and shadow. Its use by the Japanese masters was generally for the descriptive expression of the contours of objects, ignoring entirely their shadows, or any effects of light and shade, unless a shadow happened occasionally to be an important part of the pattern of the design. ”

“ It is best for the protection of the surfaces of the printing blocks and to prevent warping, also for convenience in storing and handling them, to fix across each end a piece of wood slightly thicker than the plank itself. ”

“ We must now take notice of two theories or traditions which have been current for a long time as to some intervening stage between the art of block-printing and the art of printing with movable cast types. [39] One theory or tradition would have it that the inventor of printing, after the idea of single, individual, movable types had arisen in his mind, practised his new invention for some consider able time with wooden types, and that he came only gradually to the idea of movable types cast of metal. ”

“ A block is laid flat on the table with its cut surface uppermost, and is kept steady by a small wad of damp paper placed under each corner. A pile of paper slightly damped ready for printing lies within reach just beyond the wood-block, so that the printer may easily lift the paper sheet by sheet on to the block as it is required.
It is the practice in Japan to work squatting on the floor, with the blocks and tools also on the floor in front of the craftsman. Our own habit of working at a table is less simple, but has some advantages. ”

“ The designing of a print depends most of all upon this development of line and black mass in the key-block. The colour pattern of the print is held together by it, and the form suggested. In the Japanese prints the key-block is invariably printed black or grey. Masses intended to be dense black in the finished print are printed first a flat grey by the key-block, and are then printed a full black from a colour-block like any other patch of colour, the double printing being necessary to give the intensity of the black. ”

“ If a block of wood or metal is cut away so as to leave in relief the required shapes of the characters, then by inking the raised surface an impression is easily obtained on paper. A great improvement on such block -printing was effected by making each letter a separate type in cast metal, so that the types might be used over and over again for different works. The converse of surface printing is copper-plate printing: here the design is engraved in intaglio on a sheet of metal, and the ink is contained in the sunken lines of the engraving and not on the surface of the plate. ”

“ The measurements are the areas of the etched surface, the actual plate or block may be larger, but for this margin no charge is made.
With regard to cost of printing, nothing need be said about blocks which are set up with the type, namely line, swelled gelatine and coarse half tone blocks. The price of printing fine half tones and three colour blocks depends upon the quality of the paper used and the fineness of the work. Photogravure plates must be hand printed (photogravure printing on rotary machines is not considered here) , and skill is required ”

“ These plates are filed smooth at the back, and fixed on wood, and you have the blocks ready to print from; one representing one color, another another, and so on, till the plates for a single shawl of many colors may mount up in value to a very large sum.
Before printing, the fabric has been well washed; the barège being passed, by machinery, over cylinders which apply and squeeze out a wash of soap, soda, and glue. All roughness had previously been removed by a “cropping” machine. After drying, it comes to the printing-table, where it is treated much like a paper-hanging. ”

“ The large types made for the display lines of posters are cut on wood, but these types of wood are used only for printing single lines; they are not combined with the compactness of book types, and do not require their precision of body. The wood types of Japan are, probably, the smallest wood types in practical use; but they are much larger than our book types; they are printed in smaller pages; they are not obliged to stand truly in line, nor to conform to the standards of European and American printers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In beginning it is well to undertake only a small design, so that no great amount of material or time need be consumed in gaining the first experience, but this small piece of work should be carried through to the end, however defective it may become at any stage. A small key-block and two or three colour patches may all be cut on [Pg 83] the two sides of one plank for this purpose.
There is great diversity of opinion as to the conventions that are appropriate to the designing of colour prints. In the work of the Japanese masters the convention does not vary. ”

“ It is natural that wood engraving should have occurred first to the primitive mind, because the manner in which woodcuts are printed is the most obvious of all the kinds of printing. If a block of wood is inked with a greasy ink and then pressed on a piece of paper, the ink from the block will be transferred at once to the paper, on which we shall have a black patch exactly the size and shape of the inked surface. ”

“ The preparation of getting the machine colours in position, and setting the machine ready for printing, necessitates the turning out of at least a ream, or a half ream (five hundred or two hundred and fifty rolls) at once; whilst the equivalent in hand-printing is fifty to sixty rolls. It often happens that the design of a machine paper is approved of, whilst the colourings it is printed in are unsuited to the scheme. By the hand process, room quantities of even ten to fifteen pieces can be printed specially at from 15 per cent. ”

“ It was, we see, a curiosity then, this relief cutting, of which the resurrection was to give an enormous impulse to the Book from the facilities of printing and the economies realised by the possibility of intercalation in periodicals. In fact, metal printing necessitated so much trouble, more for engraving than for the impression. With wood blocks surrounded by type the ordinary press sufficed. ”

“ This copper reproduction of the woodcut is filled in at the back with metal, mounted on wood, and is then ready for the printer, who has his ‘overlays’ all ready, and the business of printing begins.
There is nothing more wonderful in the history of printing than the rapid development of the printing machine and the extraordinary increase of its productive power. The ordinary press, though greatly improved, was found quite inadequate to the demands made upon it; and, the attention of practical men being directed to some more rapid means of production, the steam printing machine was invented. ”

“ In England, wood engraving does not seem to have been much practised before the introduction of printing, but there are one or two cuts that may be assigned to an earlier period. Mr. Ottley, in his Inquiry concerning the Invention of Printing, drew attention to a curious Image of Pity which he had found sewn on the blank leaf at the beginning of a manuscript service-book. This cut, of which he gives a facsimile in his book, is now in the British Museum. ”