WOOD, DECOMPOSITION OF. [TIMBER, PRESERVATION or.] WOOD-ENGRAVING is the art of producing raised surfaces, by excision, on blocks of wood, from which impressions can bo transferred by means of a coloured pigment to paper, or other suitable medium, and generally applied to pictorial representations of objects.
The art of cutting both upon metal and wood for other purposes than those which are now understood as printing, ascends to a very remote antiquity. [ENGRAVING.] The Babylonian bricks [CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS] bear inscriptions that have probably been formed by a tool, not much unlike some that are now used in wood-engraving, but with the difference that these characters are incised. The Egyptians seem to have made a very close approximation to printing. Some of their wooden stamps are yet remaining, and are perfectly capable of giving impressions in the manner of our present wood-cuts, though their use was doubtless for stamping on clay or other ductile material ; bricks so impressed being frequently found, of which some are in the British Museum.
The earliest application of wood-engraving to the production of a book originated, there can be but little doubt, in China, and about the middle of the 10th century, although it has been contested, chiefly on account of the silence of Marco Polo, whose work was written in the last two or three years of the 13th century. The omission is certainly remarkable ; yet on the other hand the date here given does not ascend to the period of Chinese fable, but to a period which is reached by sober historical works, and the dynasty under which it is thus stated to have been invented (that of Soong) became remarkable for the rapid development of literary genius that took place under it. It is stated that the first essay in printing was made by cutting in stone, and transferring the impression to paper, the characters of their language being thus white and the ground black. This was speedily relinquished for the use of wooden blocks, in which the characters were cut in relief, and the appearance when transferred was that of our present books. No material alteration has since been made, except that of introducing pictorial representations, which occasionally form a whole volume, the subjects being sometimes connected so that though each page is from a separate block, they would join and produce a total length of some hundred feet. Such are the illustrations to the Wan Show, " pieces of music and songs sung in the streets on imperial birth-days," being a series of representations of the public entertain ments and exhibitions, horse-racing, foot-racing. &c., of which there is a copy in the library of the Asiatic Society. The work itself is in 6 vols., of a size somewhat larger than our dcmy Svo, and the illus trations form a separate volume of several hundred pages.
The material used by the Chinese is pear-tree, which is tough, but easy to cut, and of which slabs of considerable size can be procured. The method adopted in engraving and printing is thus described by Sir J. F. Davis, in ' The Chinese, a General Description of the Empire of China and its Inhabitants :'— " The wooden plate, or block, of a thickness calculated to give it sufficient strength, is finely planed, and squared to the shape and dimensions of the loges; the surface is then rubbed over with a paste or size, occasionally made from boiled rice, which renders it quite smooth, and at the same time softens and otherwise prepares it for the reception of the characters. The future pages, which hare been finely transcribed by a professional person on thin transparent paper, are delivered to the blockcutter, who, while the above-mentioned applica tion is still wet, unites them to the block so that they adhere, but in an inverted position, the thinness of the paper displaying the writing perfectly through the back. The paper being subsequently rubbed off, a clear impression in ink of the inverted writing remains on the wood. The workman then with his sharp graver cuts away with extraordinary neatness and despatch all that portion of the wooden surface which is not covered by the ink, leaving the characters in pretty high relief.
Any slight error may be corrected, as in our woodcuts, by inserting small pieces of wood : but the process is upon the whole so cheap and expeditious, that it is generally easier to re-plane the block, and cut it again, for their mode of taking the impression renders the thickness of the block an immaterial point. Strictly speaking,' the press of China' would be a misnomer, as no press whatever is used in their printing. The paper, which is almost ss thin and bibulous, or absorbent of ink, as what we call silver-paper, receives the impression with a gentle contact, and a harder pressure would break through it. The printer holds in his right band two brushes, at the opposite extremities of the same handle ; with one lie inks the faces of the characters, and the paper being then laid on, he runs the dry brush over it so as to make it take the impression. They do this with such expedition that one man can take off a couple of thousand copies in a day." In Europe, the first application of the art of wood-engraving took place in Germany, though the place is not exactly ascertained, but is supposed I to have been near Niirnberg, about the close of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century. It was probably first used for the pro duction of playing-cards, the outlines of which were formed by impres sions from wood-cuts, and the colouring filled up by hand ; for we dismiss as utterly unfounded the story told by Papillon, in his Trait de la Gravure en Bois,' of impressions of a series of wood-cuts seen by him, of a date between 1285 and 1287, executed by Alexander Alberic Cunio and Isabella, his twin sister ; although the story is believed by Ottley (' Inquiry into the early History of Engraving '). Zani disproves the story. (See Zani, Materiali per servire alla Storia de' Progressi dell' Incision() in Ramo e in Legno,' p. 222.) The origin of playing-cards has been the subject of much contention, and the documents from which conjectures have been drawn as to the date have been singularly subject to perhaps unintentional variations by copyists. Thus the Abbe Rive (` Etrennes aux joueurs de Cartes') quotes a statute of Alfonso XI. of Castile, forbidding the use of cards in 1342 ; hut his authority is only a French translation of a Spanish poem written by Gudvare in 1539, and in the Italian translations first published in 1558 no mention is made of cards. John I. of Castile is also said to have issued an edict against the use of them in 1387 (Bullet, Recherches Historiques sur les Cartee it jouer '); but here again the authority is a collection of the laws of Spain printed in 1640, while, iu an earlier collection, printed in 1541, the same law only forbids the playing at dice and trictrac for money, omitting all mention of cards. The early specimens of cards show that they were of two kinds : one, called tarots, was formed entirely of emblematic figures, and was probably used in games similar to those in which now we endeavour to convey instruction in some departments of learning; the other, called numeral cards, was in four suits, bearing different names in various countries, but essentially the same as our present playing-cards. It is almost certain that the first are of Italian origin ; they are noticed in 1392, in a life of Philip Maria Visconti. Duke of Milan. In the same year the following entry has been found in the archives preserved in the Chamber of Accounts -in Paris :— " Donn5 it Jacquemin Gringoneur, peintre, pour trois jeux de cartes, It or et it diverses contours, orn6s de plusieurs devises, pour porter devers le seigneur Roi, pour son esbattement, cinquante sots Parisis." This, to some extent, confirms the tradition of their being invented for the amusement of Charles VI. of France. If not specially invented. they were brought into early employment for this purpose. Theie cards were painted, but as they came quickly into general use, the wood-cut was speedily adopted, and, in the Bibliotheque Imperiale of France, ten of the numeral cards are preserved of the date of 1425.