ENGRAVING. In its widest signification, engraving is the art of cutting lines or furrows on plates, blocks or other shapes of metal, wood or other material. In this sense the craft has been used for decorative purposes from remote antiquity. In the nar rower connotation with which this article is concerned, i.e., engraving for the sake of printing impressions on paper or allied fabrics, the art cannot be traced back before the Christian era. By a transference of terminology, illogical but stereotyped by usage, these impressions or prints are also called engravings. In the still more limited signification of line-engraving, the art does not go back before the first half of the I 5th century.
The term is used, however, in a looser sense to include all the methods of engraving, cutting or treating plates, or blocks of metal, wood or stone, for printing impressions. These methods can be classed most conveniently as: (I) Relief prints; (2) Intaglio prints; (3) Surface prints, according as to whether the black line of the design (i.e., the part inked for printing) on the original block, plate or stone is (I) in relief, (2) in intaglio (i.e., cut into the surface), (3) on the surface (i.e., on a level with the rest of the surface).
These divisions correspond roughly to (I) Woodcut and wood engraving; (2) Engraving and etching on metal; (3) Lithography; each class requiring a different kind of printing.
Woodcut, the earliest of the methods used for making prints, as far as records are known, whether in the East or in Europe; the furrows on the block are cut by a knife, and it is only in its later development that the graver replaces the knife, being used on sections of box-wood instead of a softer wood in the plank.
In the East the earliest certain date of a picture printed on paper from a wood-block occurs in a Chinese work, the Diamond Sutra Roll of A.D. 868 (Stein collection, British Museum), but this shows an art already in considerable development. In Europe the printing of wood-blocks on textiles was a frequent practice in the middle ages, but impressions on paper hardly date before about 1400.
The earliest line-engravings were probably printed a few dec ades later; the first dated example belongs to 1446. Line-engrav ing was certainly developed by the goldsmiths, having a par ticularly close relationship to niello work, though Vasari errs in referring the actual discovery to the Florentine niello-engraver, Finiguerra.
Etching, in which the furrow is not cut, but bitten (etched, eaten) by acid, was not practised until about 1500, the earliest dated etching belonging to 1513.
Dry-point, in which the plate is scratched with a steel point like a pencil; used occasionally from the end of the sth century, but not to any large extent until Rembrandt's time ; it has con stantly been used since by etchers, either purely or in combina tion with etching.
Mezzotint, the earliest of the processes to aim at purely tonal effects, was discovered by Ludwig von Siegen about 1642, and practised with the greatest brilliance in the later 18th century for the reproduction of Reynolds and contemporary portrait painters.
Aquatint, another tone process, wherein the grain is achieved by etching through a porous ground, is generally supposed to have been introduced by J. B. Le Prince about 1768, though occasional examples of a similar grain may be quoted at an even earlier period than that.
Stipple, another method introduced about the middle of the 18th century, is obtained by a system of dots, first etched and then finished with the point of a curved stipple graver. A system of dots, obtained by various means such as roulettes, is also the basis of crayon-engraving, which imitates the character of a crayon drawing. It was the immediate forerunner and constant companion of stipple.
Many of the intaglio methods already described are occasion ally found in combination on the same plate: such as line engraving on the basis of an etched foundation (particularly in the i8th and 19th centuries) ; etching touched with dry-point; aquatint combined with various forms of crayon-engraving, especially by the colour engravers of the 18th century. Line engraving, etching and other intaglio methods are sometimes found combined with woodcut or wood-engraving, notably in certain 17th and i8th century chiaroscuro engravings, and in Baxter's colour-prints in the 19th century.
Lithography was introduced by Aloys Senefelder about 1798. It may be regarded as the most direct method of imitating the character of original chalk drawing, but it possesses qualities of its own which justify its position apart from the multiplication of designs.
The following notes deal with general matters relating to engraving and prints:— Original Engraving (etching, etc.) does not imply the original plate (block, etc.), but any print of which the engraver is his own designer.
Impression is the term applied to any print from block, plate or stone.
State signifies a stage of development in an engraving. An artist often takes impressions (or proofs) of his work at various states of an engraving.
Counterproof is a proof taken, not from the original plate, but from a wet impression, with the purpose of obtaining a picture in the same direction as the original plate, generally to aid the engraver in making corrections or additions to his copper.
In view of the common misconception that engraving invariably implies reproduction (for the multiplication of an original design by engraving must be clearly distinguished from an engraving which reproduces the work of another artist), it is necessary to emphasize the importance of engraving in its various manifesta tions as a medium of original expression, constantly appreciated and used for the sake of its own inherent and varied qualities by many of the greatest artists from the 15th century onwards.
(See WOODCUTS AND WOOD-ENGRAVING, LINE ENGRAVING, ETCH ING, DRY-POINT, MEZZOTINT, AQUATINT, STIPPLE AND CRAYON ENGRAVING, LITHOGRAPHY, GLASS PRINTS, MONOTYPES, PHOTO ENGRAVING, COLOUR PRINTING.) to the Processes and Schools of Engraving, issued by the British Museum. (A. M. H.)