This is a basic overview of some illustration techniques used in the examples we are analyzing, with the addition of some others that became popular in England in the course of the eighteenth century. David Bland, one of our main sources of explanations, claims that few English illustrators confined themselves wholly to a single method of engraving. They were likely to mix several techniques in one plate whereas the French procedure of completing an etching with the burin was much more rigid.
For a detailed description of these and other illustration and print techniques, please visit this map at the University of Kansas.
In relief printing, the artist carves the image into a block of wood, either as a woodcut or as a wood engraving.
Intaglio printing is the opposite of relief printing, in that the image is cut or incised into a metal plate with various tools or with acids. The wide variety of methods used gives this medium its enormous range. The two basic types of intaglio printing are engraving the image into the plate with finely ground tools called needles, burnishers, scrapers, and rockers, and etching the image with acids.
Mezzotint (mezzo = half and tinta = tone) is a reverse engraving process used on a copper or steel plate to produce illustrations in relief with effects of light and shadow. The surface of a master plate is roughened with a tool called a rocker so that if inked, it will print solid black. The areas to be white or gray in the print are rubbed down so as not to take ink. Mezzoting was the favorite method of reproducing paintings in the 18th and the 19th centuries because of its range of tone. It was invented in Holland, and first used in a book in 1662. It became popular in England during the eighteenth century and was known abroad as the maniere anglaise. It became obsolete with the introduction of photoengraving. The rich quality of the print depends on the sophistication of physical relief on the plate, but even despite the highest quality artisanal work, the plate is worn away after a very few impressions. This is why later prints are much inferior to the first taken from the plate. This made the process unsuitable for mass-produced books, although its quality was considered tolerable for the reproduction of paintings. During the nineteenth century steel was used instead of copper for mezzotinting and this allowed a larger number of impressions. The illustration
on the left is John Martin's Fall of Babylon, early 19th century |
Stipple was another engraving technique very popular in England during this century. This was one of the techniques imported from the Continent, and its practitioners were generally foreigners like Bartolozzi and Schiavonetti. Engraved lines were replaced by dots, and the result is something like a coarse half-tone print of today. Apart from its use in France, it was rarely used for book illustration in England. Jacques
Bellange's Annunciation, early 17th century |
As the latest of the engraving techniques to be discovered, it was not until the turn of the century that it came into vogue, and only then imported into England. It was then used most extensively for books, especially for the topographical books which became so popular. Along with etching, this is the engraving technique most favoured by painters from Goya onwards. The artists using this technique work on a grained ground produced by powdered resin. The result is a faintly dotted texture much less insistent than stipple, and much more successful in producing tone. Aquatint plates were often touched up or colored by hand. The
example on the left is Francisco Goya's Estan calientes (They
are Hot), late 18th century |
Sources: David Bland, A History
of Book Illustration, http://www.buysellart.com/resource.htm,
http://www.weblibris.com/en/xylo.html,