Process

The process of wood engraving entails the image being incised into the hard, smooth surface of a block of end-grain boxwood with a graver or ‘burin’ similar to that used by a copper engraver. The resulting images display characteristic fine lines and textures. Since the image is printed in relief, like a woodcut, these lines will be white. The fine lines cut by the burin will be beneath the surface which carries the ink and therefore print white.Footnote ¹ This has led to many wood engravings being conceived in terms of white lines on a black background and the technique is therefore sometimes referred to as the ‘white line’ method.Footnote ²

The basic methods and techniques of the wood engraving process can be broadly described as follows:

Over time, as the process became more mechanized and commercial, divisions of labour emerged separating out the work of the artist who made the drawings and the craftsmen who cut them on wood. Master engravers employed apprentice artists who were instructed how to draw on wood specifically to suit the engraver rather than their own designs.

As a process, wood engraving in this form lasted longer than might have been imagined after the invention of photography. However, when it ultimately ceased to be widely employed at the turn of the 20th century, its disappearance was sudden and absolute, at least for a while. Joseph Pennell writing in 1896 noted, ‘Wood engraving …has been virtually invented, developed, brought to apparent perfection, and yet ceased to exist…as a trade, in this century’.Footnote ³

Mechanization in book production

The 19th century was a time of great experiment and technological advance. A vast number of new printing processes were developed during the years of Victoria's reign. Non-photographic processes included etching, copper and steel engraving, mezzotint, aquatint and lithography. Some of the more experimental methods which appeared during the first part of the century included anastatic printing, chemitype, natural printing and glyphography. A brief survey of these processes demonstrates Victorian ingenuity and great technical expertise, however many proved to be extremely ephemeral.

It was these processes that wood engraving competed with for the book and periodical illustration market in the publishing world of the later Victorian period. Metal and wood provided the basis of the main reproduction processes. Wood in particular was capable of extremely long printing runs and great improvements in the engraving of woodblocks were made, first by Bewick and then by the Dalziels and others later in the nineteenth century, particularly in the use of graving tools. So much so, that steel engraving was gradually ousted by wood engraving and lithography. One of the reasons for wood engraving's durability in the printing process is that a block, cut across the grain, is less likely to splinter and can be cut cleanly with equal pressure in all directions.

Thomas Bewick

It is difficult to describe the history and development of British wood engraving without at least a brief mention of Thomas Bewick. In 1769, Bewick made his first wood engraving using the grain side of the wood block, carving it with a metal engraving tool. Bewick's wood engravings drew upon nature for inspiration and proved to be very popular. These romantic and very detailed interpretations of the natural world established his reputation for fine, precise and skilled work. Bewick and his pupils proved the excellence of wood engraving as an illustrative technique early in the 19th century and provided the impetus behind its’ widespread adoption as a method of graphic reproduction. Many of his pupils became the leading engravers of their generation and his and their influence led to the expansion of the craft into a trade and commercial operation at a rapid rate. In 1817 only 14 wood engravers were listed in Johnson's London Guide; in 1852 this number had risen to 47 in the Post Office Directory; and by 1872 there were 128 listed in London alone.Footnote ⁴

Large wood engraving workshops developed to supply the flood of illustrated magazines and books which characterized the mid and later Victorian period. Over time, the divisions of labour became more distinct between ‘gentleman artists’ and ‘artisan engravers’. Concessions and compromises had to be made to speed the process to meet increasingly pressurized production schedules. The rapid growth of the printing and publishing trade to meet the steep growth in demand for printed information meant that wood block engraving could no longer remain the leisurely ‘cottage industry’ it had once been.Footnote ⁵

The high standards set by Bewick and his followers could not be maintained in this new printing and publishing environment and the quality of wood engraved illustration became highly variable. The expansion and increased speed of the process meant that the essence of the original image could prove impossible to maintain.Footnote ⁶ Two main classes of wood engraving emerged by the mid-Victorian period which have been categorized as ‘facsimile’ and ‘interpretative’. Facsimile was a faithful reproduction by the engraver of every line that an artist had drawn on the block, while interpretative engraving allowed the engraver to translate the tone of an original wash or pencil drawing using his own judgement and skill, sometimes to the dismay and upset of the artist.

As business boomed publishers no longer needed to search for a suitable engraver for their artists but simply sent their work to established engraving firms to be cut to a deadline. Many of the blocks dating from the middle of the 19th century are signed with the names of the engraving firms Dalziel or Swain. Mass production was supported by a system of masters, journeymen and apprentices. Work was divided by greater speed. Large white areas were usually left to the end for a junior apprentice to rout out, whilst a senior engraver began work on a new block. Techniques were developed to bolt blocks together to enable larger illustrations to be produced. This also had the advantage of enabling several engravers to work on the same illustration, speeding up the cutting of a block, particularly for periodical illustration. The work could be distributed according to the skill level or specialism of different craftsmen. If necessary, each engraver could work an area that suited them best, specializing in the cutting of landscapes, foliage or people, according to their training and preference. An example of this method was the production of the ‘Coliseum Print’, an engraving of a townscape of London published as a promotional gift for subscribers to the first volume of the Illustrated London News in 1842. It consisted of over 60 separate 5 inch wood blocks bolted together and took two months of continuous work by 18 men under the direction of Ebenezer Landells to complete.Footnote ⁷

Fig. 1.

Royal Academicians – from Photographs by John Watkins, The Illustrated London News May 2nd 1857. Credit: The Illustrated London News.

Although boxwood is very hard and can withstand a great deal of use, Victorian machine presses did tend to cause more wear than the old hand presses.Footnote ⁸ The commercial competitiveness of wood engraved illustration was therefore increased greatly by methods of duplicating blocks, making even longer printing runs possible. Duplicates solved the problem of original blocks cracking or breaking under the pressure of printing. Another technique which was developed to assist the engraver was the invention of a multiple graver which enabled four or five parallel lines to be gouged out at once, thus making the engraving of flat tones quicker and less repetitive.

As wood engraving became increasingly mechanized so it became more widely applied by the printing and publishing trade. However, declines in the quality of reproduction meant that wood engraving began to be considered less as a fine art or original creative medium and more as a purely commercial enterprise by key people in the trade. It had become a means to an end – the production of exactly repeatable mass-produced illustrations. There had been a move away from Bewick's vignette style of small engravings printed in complete harmony with letterpress and sympathetically placed within the overall book design.

Now that larger illustrations were possible, full page plates were often inserted into the book sideways on, cutting them off from the text. Authors, artists and engravers interacted in very different ways compared with Bewick's time and the early years of the century. Some authors, for example Dickens, carefully planned the exact placing of illustrations in their work. Some professional illustrators such as Sandys or Pinwell also carefully adapted their drawings from engraving. However, many barely considered the engraver and his work.

Rossetti was quick to complain when a print failed to meet his expectations:

However, end grain wood engraving still compared well in terms of speed and economy when competing with other methods of graphic reproduction. It was a relatively easy technical process and it printed well. It was inexpensive, particularly as wood engravers themselves were frequently poorly paid. Many were employed by the large London engraving firms such as those operated by the Dalziel brothers and Joseph Swain. Swain worked closely with publishers such as George Routledge whilst the Dalziels were known particularly for their contribution to illustrated magazines and the part publications popular during the Victorian period. As the technique was refined and perfected some remarkable engravings were produced. The emphasis on realism and the close connection with the text led to a flourishing of the illustrated book by the 1890's. However, the demise of this remarkable process was not far away, its eventual decline closely related to the development of photography.

The impact of photography on book and newspaper illustration

From its very beginnings, photography and its history has been closely connected with printing and printmaking. Photography was invented at a time when a great variety of graphic processes were already available. Experiments started in as early as 1813 to find a way to copy pictures particularly for transfer onto lithographic stones, without having to continually redraw them by hand. Photographic principles were combined with traditional printmaking and illustrative techniques to create photo-mechanical plates which could be inked and printed to create unlimited facsimiles of the original. At first this process required a printed image as a starting point, but soon attempts were made to photograph original drawings onto metal plates. Louis Daguerre working in Paris succeeded in fixing reversed images on metal by 1839.

The negative/positive photographic process using paper and based on the principle that silver salts darken on exposure to light was discovered by William Fox Talbot in 1835. However it was not until 1841 that he published details of the process under the name of Calotype (later known as Talbotypes). This process enabled an image from nature to be mass produced and repeated without intervention by a traditional printmaker, etcher or engraver. The era of the photomechanical printing process had truly begun.

The value of the photographic process was quickly realized by the printing trade. At first the photographic process and wood engraving co-existed in a mutually beneficial way. Photography enabled designs to be easily enlarged, reduced and reproduced multiple times with great accuracy. However the limitations of the early process did not meet with everyone's liking and some artists and illustrators declined to engage with it, preferring more familiar and well-understood techniques.

A key drawback for photographic images was that they had to be inserted or pasted into books as separate entities (that is to say, as tipped-in plates) which often resulted in a loss of harmony in the overall book design. The early forms had a tendency to fade and they also proved slow and costly to produce thanks to licence fees charged by Fox Talbot. In 1854 however, he lost a court case which effectively broke his monopoly over the new process and so through the late 1850s and into the 1860s books illustrated with pasted-in photographs became more numerous.

Fig. 2.

Wreck of the Strathmore on the Crozet Islands: Turf Tower erected by the survivors – making signals to a ship. From sketches supplied by Mr. Spencer Joslen, first class passenger. From The Illustrated London News 15^th April 1876. Credit: The Illustrated London News.

The early difficulties of working with photography as a method of graphic reproduction saved the traditional techniques and their practitioners from immediate redundancy. Mezzotints, acquatints, metal etching and engraving, wood engraving and lithography continued to be used and were still accepted by the reading public, in spite of the novelty and growing collectability of the photograph. Often a combination of processes was used in the same book. However, many printers and artists believed that the future of the graphic arts did lie with photography and efforts were made to perfect the photographic process and improve the resulting images.

By the mid 1860s a photograph of any design in any medium and of any size could be photographed onto a sensitized wood block. To many this came as a great improvement. Its primary advantage was that it enabled the original design to be preserved for future reference or sale. It also meant the artist did not have to laboriously reverse his design because photography could do it for him mechanically. A drawing could still be made onto the block if preferred and a copy could be photographed on to a second block if required. Thus the need for an intermediary draftsman to transfer his own rendering of a design onto the block began to be bypassed.Footnote ¹⁰

However, problems arose when artists began to experiment beyond the capabilities of wood engraving as a graphic medium. Unsuitable demands were made of wood engravers, who in spite of their great technical skill and expertise could not overcome some of the limitations of the medium. Some engravers did not like the new techniques as it often meant they had to work from two points of visual reference with both the original design and the photographic copy on the block before them. Constant comparison between the two not only caused eyestrain, but also precluded the spontaneity of approach they were used to applying to cutting the design. Extreme reductions or enlargements of illustrations could ruin the quality of the resulting print by overly condensing detail or requiring the use of cumbersome multi-blocks.

The technique of photographing images on wood became firmly established however and by 1896 Kelly's Post Office Directory was listing photographers on wood as a separate trade.Footnote ¹¹ Styles of engraving began to evolve too as engravers tried to interpret and represent the tones of a photograph. Portraits engraved from photographs during the later part of the 19th century were often remarkable in the detailed shading and toning techniques used. However the more mechanical style began to prove a major factor in deterring some artists from using wood engravings for illustration.

Photography eventually encouraged artists to adapt their work and their attitudes to it. The change was gradual and cumulative, but signalled the beginning of the end for end-grain boxwood engraving as a commercial and ubiquitous method of book, journal and newspaper graphic reproduction.

Wood engraving's technical downfall: photomechanical revolution

By the 1870s a variety of new photography based printing processes had been developed and were gathering momentum. These included processes such as the Woodburytype, carbon print, autotype, Albertype, collotype, process line engraving, heliogravure, photogravure and process half tone, to name but a few. Many of these processes, whilst effective and yielding high quality prints, were costly and painstaking. They were also primarily inserted into books as plates. Improvements to these techniques however began to impact on the use of wood engraving in the 1880s as the search continued for a relief process of illustration which was as quick and inexpensive as wood engraving, but capable of greater flexibility of tone.

Fig. 3.

Shipping Horses at Constantinople for the seat of war in Asia Minor, from The Illustrated London News 23rd June 1877. Credit: The Illustrated London News.

Illustrators found that their interpretation of pictorial information could now be conveyed accurately and objectively by photographic means. Artists who had in the past seen engravers further ‘interpret’ their designs could now expect their drawings to be reproduced with sufficient accuracy, whether they were in line or tone, black or white or colour. Until the 1880's wood engraving was probably still the most frequently used method of book illustration, but it's life was now limited. The division of opinion between artists, illustrators, engravers and printers as to the true role and place of wood engraved illustration, and the increasing artificial styles of engraving, became ever more apparent and undermined the past security of the trade. The final blow was dealt by the development of screened half tone printing processes in the late 1880's, particularly the invention of the photographic relief line block, photographic half tone, photogravure and photo lithography.

The basis of the process to produce a photographic relief line block was to photograph, and usually reduce, the lines of a pen and ink drawing onto a polished sensitized zinc plate which was then inked. Where the albumen based emulsion on the plat hardened on exposure to light, the ink would not hold. These areas were treated with a powdered resin which acted as an acid resist to protect the plate when it was later etched. This resulted in a relief image. The plate could be nailed to a wood base and set type high. The first line block was printed in 1876 and by the end of the 1880s line blocs were appearing in books, journals and newspapers.Footnote ¹³ It was a very direct process which did not require human translation of the image. Most designs could be accommodated on one plate and did not require multiple blocks to be bolted together as a composite. The process could reproduce simple and complicated line drawings with equal ease and economy. It could not however compete with the technical skill of wood engravers in the portrayal of tone (particularly stippling and cross hatching).

The photographic half tone sought to resolve these problems through the use of a screen to produce dots of ink when printed which were variable in size but small enough to be below the normal range of human vision. This process became viable commercially in the 1880s. A screen was placed between the design intended for reproduction and the camera which was to photograph it. The resulting negative was in turn photographed onto a sensitized copper printing plate. Dots were created whose size was directly proportional to the amount of light which passed through the negative at any point. The copper plate produced was then etched which would leave the tones in relief. It would finally be mounted on a wood block for inking simultaneously with type.Footnote ¹⁴

The Illustrated London News used half tone blocks from about 1884. This process was accurate, quick, easy and economic and resulted in a relief printing surface. Early forms were of poor quality but as the technique evolved it proved capable of highly accurate graphic reproduction. The screen was in some ways a blessing and a curse for illustrators and artists. It freed the illustrator from one set of translators, the engraver and the wood block and replaced them with others, the camera and the printing plate and their new visual codes and restrictions.

Other processes of the 1880s and 1890s particularly photogravure began to compete commercially with more traditional methods. Developments to presses and papers, plates and printing processes accompanied by improved production speeds and decreased printing costs, assisted a marked growth in publishing, particularly for book work. Even the champions of wood engraving were forced to recognize that for commercial work its days were numbered.

Opinion on the new processes was divided. Function, process and design interpretation framed the arguments of the time. The photographic half tone was accused of producing flat weak tones unsuitable for book illustration. Others suggested that photographic prints did not harmonize well with the printed page. Photomechanical processes were developed to improve speed and economy rather than specifically to help artists ensure the aesthetic they desired. Quality was an issue too with many of the new plates resulting in smudged and blotched illustrations if they were inked badly. Glossy hard paper improved the clarity of the print but was expensive and heavy to use and did not prove popular with publishers or readers.

In contrast engraved wood blocks provided a good clean cut, deep printing surface, which would ink sharply even on cheap papers. Engravers had developed great technical skill and accuracy in interpreting artist's and illustrators work. However in the end, economics won. Cutting blocks was laborious when compared to quicker photomechanical processes. More people were involved in the production process. Readers were becoming more visually sophisticated and demanding. Punch began using line blocks in 1892.Footnote ¹⁵ A few years later in 1904, the Daily Mirror’ became a newspaper entirely illustrated with half tones. Colour work and the use of more expensive methods such as collotype and photogravure further diminished the market from wood engraving. Between 1890 and 1897 commercial wood engraving fell into a rapid decline, by 1900 it was, in most respects, dead. Many talented wood engravers ended their careers as finishers of the very processes which had displaced them.

Wood engraving lingered for a time in the form of stock blocks used for illustrating catalogues and occasionally magazines, but publishers in the main, took the opportunity to cut costs at their printing plants by concentrating on photographic processes and reduce financial risk by bypassing the engraver entirely.Footnote ¹⁶

Resurgence

Research into printing education at the beginning of the 20th century shows wood engravers enrolling in classes to retrain in etching and photolithography. Later, in the early 1900s, wood engraving classes begin to be mentioned in association with draughtsmanship and training in various art colleges. The resurgence of wood engraving as an illustrative method is closely tied to the art and crafts movement and a revival of interest in 15th and 16th century printing techniques and medieval art fostered by William Morris and others.

There were several reasons for the revival of wood engraving. In part it was seen by some as a reaction against photographic methods. Once wood engraving was perceived as commercially obsolete it could be viewed more creatively, free from economic restrictions. The re-interpretation of the craft was also allied to a growing awareness and changed perception of typography, illustration, decoration and overall book design.

The roots of wood engraving's new life began with the foundation of the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith in 1891, the formation of the International Society of Wood Engravers in 1894 and the work of the Vale Press group which included Charles Ricketts and Lucien Pissarro. Wood engraving began to be talked about as an ‘art’.Footnote ¹⁷ It was indeed as an ‘art’ medium appropriate for ‘fine printing’ that wood engraving was applied in the private press movement. The Vale and Eragny Presses had a considerable influence on book production, incorporating wood cuts, lithographs and line blocks. These presses helped to take wood engraving into the 20th century and establish it in a new mode. It was developed as part of the search for the book beautiful, where design and production would co-exist, integrated and in harmony.

The continued resurgence of wood engraving in the inter-war period, was very much due to the teaching of Edward Johnson at the Central School of Art and his students Noel Rook and Eric Gill.Footnote ¹⁸ Many of the artists involved in wood engraving were new to the technique and so were undeterred by its past association with commercial reproduction. They developed a great variety of styles and changed the character of the process. Some focussed on technique and others on the imaginative possibilities of the medium. Wood engraving was used as a creative medium in its own right, much as it had done in the time of Bewick. Thus there was in part, a return to the concept of a craftsman or artist engraver and a process which could be both leisurely and imaginative.

Current work owes much to engravers such as Eric Ravilous (1903–42), Reynolds Stone (1909–1972) and Joan Hassell (1906–1988), to name but a few. A natural, direct and creative approach to the medium has been adopted by producers of private press and artists books. The techniques used and the inspiration for the craft retain their roots in the skills of Victorian engravers and the traditions of 19th century wood engraving.

A version of this article was presented as a paper at the “Livres d'Artistes: The Artist's Book in Theory and Practice” conference held at Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK, 4–6 December 2015.