: Wood Engraving by Beedham R J Gill Eric Contributor - Wood-engraving Technique

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INTRODUCTION TO SECOND EDITION

The "line" block and the "half-tone" have one clear claim to usefulness: viz. when an exact facsimile is required. It is doubtful, however, whether process reproduction would have been developed very far if its use had been confined to those occasions, and those only, when exact facsimile was of vital importance. Process reproduction owes its success to its commercial possibilities more than to its real merits, for, in spite of the frequently reiterated boast of those engaged in business that nothing can be a commercial success that does not "supply a want," by photographic reproduction a speed and cheapness have been obtained which have seduced both artists and the public. A "want" has certainly been supplied, but it is a want of quantity rather than of quality, and, as in all cases where quantitative ideas are the motive force, quality has inevitably deteriorated so that book production has become a mere business and with no criterion save that of a commercial success.

Meanwhile it is possible for any individual that wills to do so to go out into the wilderness and to live and work in a manner more in harmony with the nature of man and the will of God. For it is in accord neither with the will of God nor the nature of man that any one should love himself more than his neighbour or his neighbour more than God. The present state of affairs is an unnatural and abnormal thing. It is a disease. And any one can by the grace of God cure at least himself and put his own affairs in order.

In the domain of art the remedy is the same as in any other. The thing good in itself must be found and loved. Relative values must give place to absolute, the lovely and lovable to the beautiful. "Does it pay?" is not the question. Is it good in itself?--That is the important thing. And the more you apply that standard to your own work and to that of others, the more you will find the necessity of personal responsibility.

Another advantage of wood-engraving is that it forces upon the workman some respect for the thing in itself and makes it impossible for him to place a merely relative value upon the art of drawing. Mere likeness to nature is much more easily achieved by drawing, whether in line or wash, upon paper. The graver and the wood both of them make their own demands and make mere imitation of nature almost impossible. The workman is compelled to consider his work primarily as an engraving and only secondarily as a representation. This is a good thing, for a work of art is primarily a thing of Beauty in itself and not a representation of something else, however beautiful that other thing may be. This the public does not understand. Hence the absurdity of allowing the public to be supplied by persons who are not workmen and who have no knowledge of the implications of good workmanship but are simply men of business out to supply whatever is most profitable to themselves.

He who would be an engraver must therefore start with a clear understanding that there is "no money in it"; though if he be patient and devoted he may make a living or a part of a living by it. Further, he must be prepared to start with the wood and the graver and his sense of what is beautiful in itself and not strain after effects. He should take it for granted that a zig-zag pattern such as a child would engrave is better than the most expert imitation of a sunset. In fact he must be pre pared to begin at the beginning and to put the first things first.

E. G.

WOOD-ENGRAVING PAST AND PRESENT

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 disputed point whether artists like D?rer 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.

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