Art and Craft of Wood Engraving

INTRODUCTION

True ease . comes from art, not chance, as those who have learn'd to dance'.

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

There is a saying in the world of wood engraving, and it goes like this: 'ours is a medium where there is little to be taught and everything to be learnt.' I am sure that this is cited in relation to many other practices, but it is especially true of wood engraving. Why? Because wood engraving is, basically, refreshingly simple and no different in principle to those potato prints you made at school. It belongs to that most direct form of printmaking known as relief, and has much in common with the other forms, which are linocut and woodcut. What they all have in common is that an image or design is cut into the surface of the material and, after being rolled up with ink, a print on paper is taken. The resulting print is from the relief surface of the block. This is the opposite of the intaglio processes, such as etching, where the image comes from the incised lines. In other words, a wood engraving is a negative image, and an intaglio positive. So, it could be said with potato printing in mind that there is little to be taught here, but the subtleties and finesse of wood engraving will take you on a lifetime of learning.

This book is aimed at complete beginners but will also be of interest to anyone who engraves. I was not of that generation where wood engraving was taught in art schools and universities and, in fact, there are few engravers with that experience left. I was, however, lucky enough to have had a brief period of tuition from the great engraver of lettering, Leo Wyatt. For the most part, I am self-taught. Over the years I have absorbed a great deal of informal tuition through contact with other engravers and exposure to the world of engravings in books, exhibitions and my own collection. The Society of Wood Engravers (SWE) in the UK, and the Wood Engravers Network in the USA are precious resources of engravers and teachers who are more than happy to share their knowledge, as well as being a continuation of engraving history. The annual touring exhibition of the SWE is a unique way of discovering the best in modern engraving from artists around the world.

For those who have no experience of wood engraving, or any other form of printmaking, you will find this book a step-by-step guide to the process. The only thing I presuppose is a keen interest in the practice of drawing, since drawing is the foundation of all the graphic and plastic arts. Having said that, it could be that your first steps in wood engraving kindle a desire to advance your drawing skills. If you are already a wood engraver, the approach of another engraver will be at least a matter of curiosity and might even be of help.

Woodcut by Chris Daunt showing woodgrain and angular cutting.

For those coming to the medium from linocut (or the less practised woodcut), you will find many of your methods are transferable. Over the years I have taught many wood engraving courses and I can usually tell if a student has linocut experience - they often tend to treat wood engraving as a smaller-scale version of linocut. I mention this now because I want to ask the question, why undertake wood engraving and not linocut or woodcut? Due to the nature of the endgrain wood block and the kind of tools used, engraving is capable of a far greater range of mark-making, texture and tonal subtlety, and to treat it as a miniature form of linocut is to miss out on a great deal.

Wood engraving by Chris Daunt showing fine cutting and subtle tonality that are impossible with either woodcut or linocut.

HISTORY

Throughout the nineteenth century, writers on the subject often used the term 'woodcut' to denote both endgrain engraving as well as sidegrain woodcut. The seventeenth-century French artist Jean Michel Papillon wrote a book entitled Traité Historique et Pratique de la Gravure en Bois, which describes his technique clearly as woodcut. The book predates the invention of engraving on endgrain wood with metal engravers' tools, yet Papillon's practice of cutting sidegrain wood with knives and gouges is usually referred to as engraving.

Woodcut materials: side-grain wood and woodcut tools. The knives and gouges used in woodcut are small, palm versions of tools used by carvers.

The trained eye can discern the difference and it is certain that Papillon would have found engraving more suited to his quest for finesse and detail, but he never managed to make the leap that would raise his medium to the next level of refinement. With some exceptions the woodcut was long considered a poor relation to copperplate and steel engraving and was often used to illustrate the chapbook. These were short books for popular consumption, accompanied by woodcut images that often did not relate to the text, rather like the clipart image. For works of literature, copperplate was the only technique considered worthy to accompany fine prose or poetry. However, the cost of this kind of illustration was high, since the printing of an intaglio plate required the sheet with the engraving to be printed in a different press: one press for the copperplate and another for the text with moveable type. Hence, the emergence of a type of high wood block cut with the delicacy of a copperplate engraving revolutionised the printed page.

Early nineteenth-century chapbook, Newcastle. This crude woodcut style was considered inferior and unsuitable for fine printing.

Detail from an eighteenth-century copperplate engraving. Black line crosshatching, like pen work, characterises copperplate work.

It is often assumed that Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) invented wood engraving, and the fact that a Google search implies that he did should make you wary of trusting this distinctly fallible source of information. Although it is true that Bewick is considered the father of wood engraving, he did not invent the medium. As far as I know, no one is certain who first put a graver to a block of endgrain wood, but it may have been Elisha Kirkall with his engravings for Samuel Croxall's Fables of Aesop and Others, first published in 1722.

Aesop's Fables by Elisha Kirkall. These engravings were relief prints, though there is some uncertainty as to whether Kirkall used endgrain wood or metal. Nevertheless, these illustrations were a step towards the development of wood engraving.

As an apprentice engraver the young Thomas Bewick displayed a natural aptitude for jobs requiring wood engravings and he rapidly mastered the medium. His engravings for A General History of Quadrupeds (1790) and The History of British Birds, published in two volumes (1797 and 1804), show his extraordinary talent as an engraver, as well as being the most comprehensive visual account of natural history. Bewick's engravings are remarkable for their accurate depiction of wildlife, as well as astonishing technical skill in his creation of silvery-grey tones by means of contouring his blocks before engraving, so that selected areas received less ink and less pressure in the printing process. Equally special are Bewick's vignettes or tailpieces depicting everyday life in Newcastle and his beloved Tyne Valley, with a keen and compassionate eye.

Thomas Bewick, from British Birds, volume 1, Land Birds.

After Bewick, the industry standard for illustrations in books, newspapers and periodicals was wood engraving, and as a result engraving workshops became widespread. The wood engravings coming out of these workshops were often remarkably accomplished, but were reprographic images made to mimic pencil drawings or photographic originals. As such, they were a debased form of the medium, working against its natural propensity to produce white lines from black. The well-known illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865), drawn by Sir John Tenniel, are a good example of such engraving.

Illustration for Alice in Wonderland. Wood engraving as a facsimile medium, replicating pen and ink drawings. Extraordinary skill by the Dalziel brothers, but working against the medium.

The most respected wood engravers of the age, the Dalziel brothers, were tasked with making engravings of Tenniel's pen drawings and were expected to make faithfully accurate cuts replicating every pencil line, dot and cross hatching. Technically these engravings were the high point of engraving skill (as well as a debasement of the medium) and were made as engraving was about to be replaced by the half-tone photographic plate. Printing from the relief half-tone plate meant that the intermediary stage of producing an engraved block was all but eliminated and by the 1890s illustrations in books, journals and newspapers were mostly from photographic plates.

Timothy Cole. Detail from Fishing Boats off Yarmouth by John Sell Cotman. Although Cole's engravings were made to reproduce paintings in nineteenth-century American magazines, they are technical treasures for engravers.

At its very best, nineteenth and early twentieth century reprographic or facsimile engraving can be seen in the astonishing engravings of Timothy Cole (1852-1931). English-born Cole was brought up in America and became an engraver/illustrator for art magazines. He was sent to European galleries to make engraved copies of old master paintings. Cole had the painting photographed onto the engraving block using darkroom methods and would then engrave it....