19th Century Printing of Wood Engravings

Clearly American printers late 19th century (1880-1900) in the publishing industry were the finest printers of wood engravings. Unsurpassed, I would say.

There will be Industry Journals, in house manuals for the “pressmen” to train and assist in obtaining these fine results.

I am looking for a known source of this reading material in any Library or for sale.

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This may be of interest to you:

http://cprr.org/Museum/Engravings/Harpers_Engravings.html

I have a few original old wood engravings and they do not look like they were ever inked. I think that is because they had electrotype copies made of them, and the electros were what were printed.

Printer’s manuals from the period usually have a section that deals with printing wood engravings, as do wood engraver’s manuals. I’ve not had a chance to look at old industry publications, but I’m sure there were some articles on the subject. Your best bet would be to look for periodical references in the National Union Catalogue entries of the period, which are usually held in the reference sections of most libraries.

Probably the two most recently published references are “Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress” by Richard-Gabriel Rummonds, published by Oak Knoll Press and the British Library in 2004, and “Interpretive Wood-Engraving” by William H. Brandt, Oak Knoll Press 2009. The former covers the references made in printing manuals, and the later is largely a short rehashing of the same info.

Since presswork was considered a skill separate from that of the wood-engravers there is some overlap from wood-engraver’s manuals to printers, but a lot of the information is what we call today ‘cut & paste’. I have collected almost all of the wood-engraving manuals in English, and can assure you there is very little difference between the first published in 1839 and the last published in England a few years ago. Once the basic principle is understood, which is just a bit more elaborate make-ready than a type form, it is incumbent upon the printer to do what he/she can to make the engraving at hand print as well as possible.

I once had the opportunity to print an unpublished Thomas Bewick block. It had apparently been rejected because of a technique that Bewick used called lowering, where a section of the block that should print lighter is lowered then engraved. In this way the area would receive less ink, and less impression. On the particular block I printed the lowered area was too low, and did neither. When I made-ready the block the paper under the tympan ended up looking like papier-maché, or an embossing counter.

The engravings from the period 1880-1900 are far more detailed than anything being done today. I have several hundred proofs from illustrations of that period on India paper and Japanese tissue. All of these were printed from the block for either the publisher, or the engraver, and were printed on Washington hand-presses, mostly by proof-printer J. C. Bauer or his son - one even having a full inky palm-print of the printer on the back of the sheet. Another proof notes that only 25 copies were printed, as the block cracked under the pressure.

The journals of that period were mostly printed from electrotype copies of the wood-engravings, as it was too risky to print from the block itself. One exception is some of the pictures from the Illustrated London News, which, since they illustrated breaking news and had no time for electrotyping, were printed from the blocks. The artist-engraver Rockwell Kent always had his blocks electrotyped before being editioned as prints, and certainly before they were published in books. The wood-engraver Timothy Cole had the blocks he produced in Europe electrotyped before being shipped to New York for printing, because the tariffs on copies of blocks were cheaper than on the originals. It is a fascinating subject, and one that has consumed me for more than 30 years.

Paul

image: TimothyColeEngravingCloseUp.jpg

TimothyColeEngravingCloseUp.jpg

Just a note, a block that has been electrotyped will have a black coating of graphite which was used as a release for the wax mould used to build the copper electrotype shell. This often appears as black ink, but is often not ink at all. Wood engravings were used commercially as catalogue illustrations in the jewelry, automotive, hardware, and scientific instrument communities. The last catalogue in the US to use new wood-engravings was one printed for Fisher Scientific in 1972. I have a catalogue from a hardware wholesaler for 1965 which contains nearly 10,000 wood-engravings, and several scientific instrument catalogues from the late 1920s that contain some of the most brilliantly executed wood-engravings I’ve ever seen.

Paul

Paul, that is very interesting. Thanks for posting it. I have only once printed an actual 19th century wood engraving, and that was many years ago. What is the proper way to clean an old wood engraving after it is printed?

(Sorry, kcranmer, I don’t mean to hijack your thread, but I think Paul has already answered your question, so hope you don’t mind).

I’ve always used Kerosine and a soft brush, then set on edge so the air circulates around it.

Thanks, Paul. If I get up the courage to print one of mine, I will clean it and set it on edge as you describe.

Geoffrey. Make sure you check the height of your old engraving. Sometimes they can be over type high, and without checking they can be badly smashed.

Paul