Although Mr. Eric Gill in his introduction has explained that this book is
not a treatise on the art of wood-engraving, I feel constrained to add a
chapter to the present edition of the work, chiefly on the past and modern
styles of wood engraving; also to give some information to the younger
craftsmen, some of whom, having lived only in an age of photo-mechanical
reproduction, are quite unaware of the important part that wood engraving
has had in the past for the purposes of book-illustration.
It is a very old craft, older than book-printing from type. It quickly
became the chief means of decorating and illustrating books, and continued
to be so until the invention of photographic processes, which, for general
purposes have supplanted it. Some of the old blocks, cut in simple
outline, fit the printed page in a most admirable manner; in their
particular style they have not been surpassed. An example of this is the
re-cut from _The Decameron_ 1492 on page 47. These early blocks were all
cut on the long grain of the wood, a method that continued until it was
discovered that the end grain was a better medium for cutting of fine
lines for shading or outline.
It is a disputed point whether artists like Dürer or Holbein engraved
their own work. It was probably left to the expert to cut in faithful
facsimile the drawings done by the artist on wood. With a few notable
exceptions, this method of the division of labour, the artist being one
person and the engraver another, continued until wood-engraving was
supplanted by process. For reproductive purposes it was a natural
division. After that a completely new style of engraving, that of the
present day, came into being.
Thomas Bewick was one of the great exceptions to this division of artist
and engraver. Not only did he engrave his own drawings, but he evolved a
completely new style. He abandoned elaborate cross hatching, and for the
most part cut in the most direct and simple way. Nevertheless, for
ordinary reproductive purposes the artist and engraver continued to be
different persons; the artist continued to draw on the wood, filling the
shading with a wash of Indian ink and finishing by means of pen or pencil
lines, or perhaps using the pen alone, but whether drawn by pen or pencil
the engraver faithfully reproduced it, line by line. This necessitated
great skill on the part of the engraver, for the merest thickening or
thinning of the lines altered the effect of the drawing. But sometimes the
drawing was done by wash only, in which case the engraver kept as nearly
as he could to the shade or tone of the original without the aid of
cross-hatching.
This continued until photography made itself felt. It is remarkable that a
vast industry, of which the cinema is the latest development, should have
arisen as the result of the discovery that certain substances changed
their colour and character in the presence of light. It first greatly
influenced wood-engraving and finally ousted it as a means of
reproduction. Photographers found a way of photographing on to the wood
not only drawings but other photographs, and the engraver had to adjust
his style to the new medium, for to cut direct from a photograph was very
different from cutting facsimile from a drawing. The black lines of
cross-hatching disappeared and white lines took their place. Whenever
possible a white line was cut and cross-hatching, where it was necessary,
consisted of white lines crossing each other. Not only so but a method of
cutting short white lines or dots, known generally as stippling, came to
be used. Reproductive engraving speeded up and became a miracle of skill.
The use of stipple reached its outstanding development in the work of the
American, Timothy Cole. In his engravings of the Old Masters he got
amazing effects of atmosphere by means of stippling alone.
The same photographic influence made itself felt amongst the commercial
engravers of machinery. The black outlines of the machine became altered
to white lines whenever possible, and as in the pictorial field, the style
became completely altered. Here let me say that the engraving of machinery
for commercial catalogues is one of the most exacting forms of engraving
that I know. As a means of showing the object perfectly it holds its own
to the present day. There are a rapidly dwindling few who still manage to
get a living from it.
The great skill of the reproductive engraver was amazing. On the staff of
some of the periodicals, where speed joined to excellence of cutting was
essential, there were engravers who could cut a good portrait in two
hours, and this in the style just described, line upon line in the
perfectly free precision of the time. But this skill of the old
reproductive engraver, skill largely for its own sake I fear, made more
easy his undoing. Individuality became partly lost in the skill of
technique. It sometimes seemed as if he were imitating his great
competitor, the process block. The Americans were, I think, great
offenders in this. Though a most lovely craft, wood-engraving, just before
it was superseded by process, had not within it sufficient originality and
power to hold its own. It was largely reproductive only: the real artist
was too often left out. Process developed rapidly as the more effective
way of reproducing originals of one sort or another, and the reproductive
engraver was bereft of his craft. The output of engravings had been
enormous. Some of the old-established printing and publishing firms
cherish their old wood blocks: they belong to the furniture of the past.
Others sold their blocks to the boxwood merchant, not by the block but by
the ton!
The period just preceding the influence of photography was one, in the
writer’s opinion, when reproductive engraving reached its highest level
for book illustration. The engravings of this period, if properly printed,
appeal for the quality of their softness, their skill, and a sweetness of
effect seldom accomplished by the modern style. In many of the volumes of
this period are wood-engravings unequalled in their fidelity to the
objects shown, and that have a beauty not surpassed by modern or any other
engraving. But the days when they were engraved are long since past. We
wait again for their revival, which I believe will come, for it is too
good a thing to be entirely lost. But it cannot come as it came before:
that never happens. The difference will be that the artist will do his own
engraving. There are engravers of the present time, who, almost
unconsciously, are doing work much in the style of this period.
The modern revival of wood-engraving, which came just after the war, is
quite different in style from any that preceded it. The artist and
engraver are now one, as they should be where original work is to be done,
and every exponent of the craft expresses his or her own individuality.
The technique of the old school was swept completely away. “Start
engraving with an axe” was an exhortation overheard, and some of the
earliest examples, with their masses of unrelieved black, rather look as
if they had been engraved by that implement. Design is the outstanding
quality of the present style. Twenty years has brought command of the
engraving tool and now most excellent work is produced with the
originality of the artist-craftsman upon it. The early crudeness having
gone, the modern engraver brings to the printed page a decoration
outstanding in effect. Amongst the mass of process reproduction is the
Wood-engraver, engraving his own designs, thereby expressing an
originality which will most certainly mark the present age of
book-production as something well worth examination. It is therefore
essential that the modern engraver design his own engravings and he will
select the kind of tools which will best express his own individuality,
for it is this individuality of the artist which alone amongst all its
competitors will keep alive Wood-engraving as a vital craft.