WOOD ENGRAVING is the art of pro ducing raised surfaces, by excisjon, on blocks of wood, from which impressions can be trans ferred by means of a coloured pigment to paper, or other suitable medium, and gene rally 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. The Egyptians indeed seem to have made a very close approximation to printing, in their wooden stamps used for im pressing characters on clay or other ductile material ; and printing from engraved wood blocks has been practised by the Chinese pro bably from the 10th century.
In Europe the first application of the art of wood-engraving took place in Germany about the beginning of the 15th century. It was probably first used for the production or playing-cards, the outlines of which were formed by impressions from wood-cuts, and the colouring filled up by hand. The first wood-cut with a date known to be in existence is of 1423 ; it represents St. Christopher car rying our Saviour on his shoulders across a river. The next great step was the production of block books and the adoption of moveable letters ; and without entering into the disputed question of the dates of the ' Biblia Pau perurn; the' Speculum Salvationis; and others, they sufficiently prove the extension of its use, and many of the early books with moveable types were illustrated with pictorial wood-cuts. Maps also were engraved on wood. In an edition of Ptolenateus, printed in 1482 at Ulm, there are twenty-seven ; and in a later edition, printed at Venice in 1511, the outline, with the mountains and rivers, is in wood, while the names are printed with type, and in two colours, no doubt by separate workings. In
1486 the improvement known as cross-hatch ing,' by which the bold and free effect of a pen-drawing was endeavoured to be attained, was shown in Breidenberg's Travels,' printed at Mentz. This invention has been usually attributed to MichaelWohlgemuth, the master of Albert Diirer. The art had now attained an excellence which induced artists of cele brity and talent to select it as the means of conveying their designs to the world. Among the most distinguished in this line was Albert Darer, whose productions as a painter, and an engraver on copper and wood, are so nu merous as to excite a doubt whether lie was actually an engraver on wood himself, or whether he only put the designs the block's, leaving them for other hands to execute.
In the early part of the 16th century several artists of celebrity were either designers on wood or engravers. Books were also at this period profusely illustrated. The art was chiefly practised in Germany, where it was patronised by the Emperor Maximilian, for whom Burgmair produced the great work called Tho Triumphs of Maximilian.' The next great name in the annals of wood-en graving is Hans Holbein, whose' Dance of Death' was printed at Lyon, in 1538, though Bertsch and Jackson deny that he engraved on wood, and Mr. Douse even questions his being the designer. From about 1515 to 1580 wood-engraving continued to be much used for the illustrating of books. From this period there is little to be recorded of essential im portance, till the appearance of Bewick, to whom tho revival of wood-engraving is chiefly to be attributed. 1