antique prints info | Walls Gallery https://wallsgallery.com Walls Fine Art Gallery - White Sulphur Springs Tue, 25 Aug 2015 16:30:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Antique Printmaking Methods https://wallsgallery.com/project/antique-prints-methods/ Wed, 22 Jul 2015 13:50:55 +0000 https://wallsgallery.com/?post_type=project&p=7763

Antique Printmaking Methods

Engraving

  • Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result in an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called engravings.
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  • Wood engravings were used for newspapers – such as “Harpers Weekly”
  • Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper in artistic printmaking, in mapmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines.
  • Intaglio is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print.

Etching

An etching is created by covering a metal plate with an acid-resistant layer of wax called a ground and drawing a design through the ground using an etching needle. The plate is then placed in an acid bath for 3-15 minutes, which bites into the exposed lines, thus etching the design into the plate.

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After dipping the plate in acid, sections of the design can be stopped out with varnish and the plate immersed in the acid again. This creates a deeper bite, and thus darker lines, for those areas not stopped out. Etching is an intaglio process, so prints made in this manner will have a platemark. Etching allows for a freer artistic hand than does engraving.

Woodblock

  • Woodblocks entail creating a relief image like a stamp on a block of wood by cutting away the parts that are not part of the image. The design is usually drawn directly onto the block and then all other parts are cut away. In a woodcut the image is cut from the block parallel to the grain using a knife or a pointed tool called a graver.
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  • A relief print is one whose image is printed from a design on the raised surface of a block. In this type of print the ink lies on the top of the block and is transferred to the paper under light pressure.
  • A chromoxylograph is an image printed in color from a wood block. Because these processes print in relief, like moveable type mounted on wooden blocks, they were often used to illustrate relief typeface books and newspapers.
  • Woodcuts were introduced to Europe in the early fifteenth century (the earliest European woodcut is the “Brussels Madonna” of 1418), but were executed in the Orient as early as the ninth century. The use of woodcuts was spread by the inventions of moveable type and of the printing press in the 1450s.

Mezzotint

  • Mezzotint can be thought of as the inverse of the other intaglio processes, for a mezzotint design is created working from black to white, rather than vice versa. In a mezzotint the metal plate is worked using a rocker, which roughens the entire surface of the plate with tiny holes and burrs.
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  • If the plate were printed at this time the image would be completely velvet black. Areas that are to appear in lighter tones or in white are polished out on the surface so that they will hold less ink.
  • Mezzotint is an intaglio process, so prints made in this manner will have a platemark. The mezzotint process makes a very richly textured image and was used particularly for portraits. Used primarily in the eighteenth century, it was especially popular in England and was often called la manière anglaise.

Lithograph

  • A Lithograph is created by drawing an image onto a stone slab (lithography = “stone-drawing”) using a grease crayon or a greasy ink called tusche. The process is based on the principle that grease and water do not mix.
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  • To create a lithograph, the stone or plate is washed with water –which is repelled by the crayon– and then with ink –which is absorbed by the crayon. The image is printed onto the paper from the stone or plate, which can be re-inked many times without wear.
  • Lithography is a planographic process and so no platemark is created when a lithograph is printed.
  • Because lithographer’s stones have become rare, metal plates are more often used these days.

Chromolithograph

  • A Chromolithograph is a colored lithograph, with at least three colors, in which each color is printed from a separate stone and where the image is composed from those colors.
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  • Chromolithography upon its discovery became the prime means of image production due to its durability and its incredible richness and depth of color. It was used not only for fine art imagery, but for advertisements and informational flyers. The purity and beauty of its images are impressive even today.

Four Color Offset Lithograph

  • A Four Color Offset Lithograph depends on photographic processes, and flexible aluminum, polyester, mylar or paper printing plates are used instead of stone tablets. Modern printing plates are covered with a photosensitive emulsion.
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  • A photographic negative of the desired image is placed in contact with the emulsion and the plate is exposed to ultraviolet light. After development, the emulsion shows a reverse of the negative image, which is thus a duplicate of the original (positive) image.
  • The plate rolls against a cylinder covered with a rubber blanket, which squeezes away the water, picks up the ink and transfers it to the paper with uniform pressure. Because the image is first transferred, or offset to the rubber blanket cylinder, this reproduction method is known as offset lithography or offset printing.

 

Hand Coloured Lithograph

A Hand Coloured Lithograph is a lithograph as described above, that has been filled in with watercolour, inks, or another colored markmaking instrument, to make the image multi-coloured.

Traditional Paper Making

In the thirteenth century, paper was produced from linen rags. The rags would reach the papermakers after a long life of use – going from fine clothing, to maids garb, to scullery garb, to household rags, and, when finally beyond saving, the rags would be bought up by Ragmen, who would venture from house to house, buying and selling old rags, which they would then sell to papermakers. Papermaking as a craft that required a long and often expensive apprenticeship. Workers were frequently sworn to secrecy because no craftsman wished to share their knowledge with competitors.
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Upon receiving the rags the women at the papermakers facilities would carefully sort them by quality of linen and then clean the rags of buttons, excess threads, and any other earthly detritus. The rags were then washed and piled high to ferment before being pulped. The pulping process was one during which women would stomp on the rags in deep vats until the rags broke down to mere fibers. The pulped fibers were then thoroughly mixed so that the vatman could dip a wire mesh tray into the mixture and lift out upon the screens surface the correct amount of pulp to produce the required thickness of paper.

A wooden frame called a deckle was then fitted over the tray to form a raised edge and prevent the watery pulp from escaping. Pulp flowing between the frame and the deckle produced an irregular feathery edge around the paper hence the term “deckle-edged” paper. As soon as possible the newly formed sheet of paper was removed from the tray and placed between two pieces of felt. The paper-and-felt “sandwiches” were then pressed to remove surplus water and then the fresh paper was hung to dry.

This method of papermaking produced paper that would never yellow because all the lignin found in linen fibers (lignin causes paper to yellow over time due to its natural acidic content) would have been washed away over the years of use before the rags reached the papermakers. European papermaking didn’t blossom until the 15th century. When Gutenberg produced his first Bible in 1456, most manuscripts were still made from parchment – the skin of a sheep or goat that’s been prepared for writing – or vellum, the skin of a calf. It took the skins of 300 sheep to print one copy of Gutenberg’s Bible. However, by the sixteenth century, paper mills using old cloth rags were springing up all over Europe. Linen was the predominant source of material for paper, although cotton began to show up in paper by the 18th century, as American production began to recycle cotton rags. In 1588 the first paper mill in England to produce good quality white paper on a commercially viable basis was opened by John Spilman.

This began a new era of paper production with tones ranging from brown to pure white, and literature and information began to spread across Europe at an exponential rate. However, recycled rags were virtually the only source of papermaking fiber in the Western world for over 700 years, until wood pulp processes were developed in the mid-nineteen century.

]]> About the Print Makers https://wallsgallery.com/project/about-the-print-makers/ Sat, 11 Jul 2015 15:36:42 +0000 https://wallsgallery.com/?post_type=project&p=7786

About the Print Makers

Bodmer, Karl

A native of Zurich, Bodmer is best known in the U.S. as the painter who captured the American West of the 19th century with incredibly accurate depictions of its inhabitants. The German explorer Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied hired Bodmer from 1832-1834 for his Missouri River expedition. He was hired as the artist of the expedition to record images of cities, rivers, towns and people they saw along the way, including many images of Native Americans. In 1877 Bodmer was made a Knight in the French Legion of Honour for his incredible artistic contributions.

Curtis, Samuel

William Curtis was a noted botanist who began The Botanical Magazine in 1787, this periodical sold two thousand copies of each print during William’s lifetime. After his death in 1799, his son Thomas Curtis took over the Magazine. However, it was his nephew, a biographer and horticulturalist, Samuel Curtis who really established the magazine and changed the name to Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. It is the longest running botanical publication in history, and it continues to be published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew as a publication for those interested in horticulture, ecology, or botanical illustration.

 

de Bry, Theodor

A Protestant family of engravers who owned and operated their own printing house, the head of the family was Theodor de Bry, who taught his son Johann Theodor de Bry his craft. Father and son shared a fascination with the discovery of the Americas and thusly their engravings primarily focused on the journey there, and on the peoples, the floral, and the fauna of North and South America. Since de Bry himself never was able to visit the “New World” his works are based on first-hand observations by explorers and their paintings, drawings, and written descriptions. His works reflect his decidedly European bias, nonetheless, these were the first images that many people saw of the Americas and helped to encourage European interest in them.

Garnier, Édouard

“Le Porcelaine Tendre de Sevres” (The Soft Porcelain of Sevres) by Edouard Garnier, was published in Paris circa 1891. The book focused on the finest of Sevres porcelain, using high quality chromolithographs to display the exquisite luminosity, colour, and gilding of Sevres porcelain. The Sevres factory was established in 1738 at the Chateau de Vincennes, to supply the wealthy and privileged of France under the patronage, and later the ownership, of Louis XV. Sevres porcelain was so loved by King Louis XV that when the company ran into financial difficulties he bought out the shareholders and became sole proprietor from his palace at Versailles. Sevres became known as the “Porcelain of French Royalty”.

Johnson, Henry

Johnsons Household Book of Nature from 1880 was comprised of “…full & interesting descriptions of the Animal Kingdom based on the writings of the Eminent Naturalists Audubon, Wallace, Brehm, Wood, and others”.

Published by Henry J. Johnson this encyclopedic work on animals was modest in size and served to open the doors to the wonders of the world to children and common households. Its beautiful imagery and thrilling descriptions of the animal kingdom taught parents the value of bookshelves filled with educational literature.

Martin, Homer Dodge

Born and raised in Albany, NY, Martin in the early 1860s spent his summers in the Catskills, Adirondacks, or White Mountains and composed expansive lake and mountain views. A transitional figure in American landscapes during the second half of the 19th century, Martin links the painters of the Hudson River School to the American followers of the French Barbizon artists and eventually Impressionism. Many of his works are in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of the Arts.

Pannemaeker, Pieter De

In the 19th century when Belgium was the leading center for botanical publishing, the Ghent printmaker, landscape and botanical painter Pannemaeker produced some 3000 illustrations for botanical books and periodicals. He received the Croix de Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole from the French government in 1886 for his contributions to botanical science and horticulture.

Thornton, Dr. Robert

Temple of Flora, sometimes criticized for its scientific inaccuracy, is perhaps the single most famous of all florilegium. Dr. Robert Thornton was the driving force and visionary behind the creation of this great work. To produce it, he employed other artists and engravers. He intended to issue seventy plates dramatically and poetically illustrating the sexual system of plants. It required the completion of only twenty-eight plates to bring financial ruin upon the well-stationed physician. The project fell victim to Thorton’s almost fanatical attention to detail and the changing taste of a social elite who had become somewhat jaded by the preponderance of great flower books created during this period. Thornton died destitute, financially ruined by his dream.

Buffon, George Louis Leclerc, Comte De

A French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author, it has been said that “Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century”. Buffon published 36 quarto volumes of his Histoire Naturelle during his lifetime; with additional volumes based on his notes and further research being published in the two decades following his death. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, and the art continues to influence us today.

Curtis, Thomas

The son of William Curtis who began the “Botanical Magazine” in 1787, Thomas ran the periodical until it was taken over by his cousin, Samuel Curtis.

Deshayes, Gérard Paul

A French geologist and a foremost malacologist (the branch of invertebrate zoology that deals with the study of mollusks), Deshayes is best known for his beautifully illustrated works and his research of the Paris Basin, from which important evolutionary information resulted. Thanks to the good working relationship between English geologist Charles Lyell, Deshayes was able to divide the Tertiary system into Eocene, Miocene and Pliocene.

Giardini, Giovanni

Giardini was an Italian draughtsman and master silversmith, whose reputation was based on his pattern-book designs for sacred and common objects, which were engraved by Maximilian Limpach and published in Prague in 1714 as ‘Disegni diversi’. This was the most important collection of patterns for silversmiths of the 18th century. The objects were divided into different groups, with original decorative designs serving to demonstrate the influence of Baroque sculpture and architecture on the modern art world.

Jones, Owen

An English-born Welshman, Owen was a versatile architect and designer, in fact he was one of the most influential design theorists of the nineteenth century. He helped pioneer modern color theory, and his theories on flat patterning and ornamenting still resonate with contemporary designers today. He rose to prominence with his studies of Islamic decoration at the Alhambra, and the associated publication of his drawings, which pioneered new standards in chromolithography.

Middleton’s Geography

Published by Charles Theodore Middleton and titled A New and Complete System of Geography the book was touted to contain “…a full, accurate, authentic and interesting account and description of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, as consisting of continents, islands, oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, promontories, capes, bays, peninsulas, isthmusses, gulphs…with their strange ceremonies, customs, amusements”. The engravings were based on descriptions brought back to England from afar and were accompanied by written descriptions of the foreign lands, feeding the public’s hunger to see the world.

Ridinger, Johann Elias

A German painter, engraver, draughtsman, and publisher, Ridinger is considered one of the most famous German engravers of animals, in particular horses, hounds, and hunting scenes. His engraved, etched, and scratched sheets show animals in characteristic movements and positions in landscape environments, while the ornamental qualities of his works show Rococo tendencies. His drawings also were held in high esteem and were frequently transferred to decorate porcelain and ceramics.

Vanity Fair

The prints from Vanity Fair are printed by chromolithography and they range in subjects from Kings and Queens, to scientists and artists, authors and sportsmen, lawyers and politicians, and figures from pretty much all other types of occupations. There are some very famous figures (such as Winston Churchill, Bernard Shaw, P.T. Barnum) and a large group of now virtually unknown “Men of the Day.” Some of the images are fair staid, but many have a delightful verve and humor.

Wright, JW

Wright was an English genre and portrait watercolour painter and illustrator. Wright painted domestic and sentimental subjects in the popular styles as well as historical compositions, notable for their detailed depictions of costumes. Indeed, for Wright the plays of Shakespeare were a frequent source of inspiration and joy.

Crombie, Charles Exeter Devereux

An Editorial Cartoonist Crombie specialized in cartoons and publication illustrations. His collection of humorous postcard cartoons “The Rules Of Golf” was published by Perrier in 1906, and rapidly became a best-selling series. Other similar sporting themes (including “The Rules Of Cricket”) followed with equal commercial success.

Curtis, John

It is unknown if John was a blood relative of the Curtis publishing empire, but he was a prolific engraver for Curtis’s Botanical Magazine and published many of his plates in said magazine.

Fenn, Harry

An English-born American illustrator, landscape painter, etcher, and wood engraver. From 1870 – 1895 Fenn was the most prominent landscape illustrator in the United States, he was a sought-after illustrator for the leading illustrator periodicals, Century Magazine, “Harper’s Monthly,” “Harper’s Weekly,” and Scribner’s. Fenn’s work fostered pride in America’s scenic landscapes and urban centers, informed a curious public about foreign lands, and promoted appreciation of printed pictures as artworks for a growing middle class.

Jacquin, Nikolaus Jos.

A Dutch born botanist and one of the most prolific botanical authors of eighteenth-century Europe, Jacquin’s career began  with an expedition to the tropics. This experience then led him to the recording and documenting of around 2000 new plant species. Even more impressive are the 2927 plates depicting more than 3500 species of plants (and some fungi and lichens) that he published in 12 titles, most of them issued in multiple volumes of hand-colored folios.

Lemery, Nicolo

Also known as Nicolas Lemery, Lemery learnt pharmacy before moving onto lecturing in chemistry and opening his own pharmacy. Lemery did not concern himself much with theoretical speculations, but held chemistry to be a demonstrative science. As a result, his lecture-room was thronged with people of all sorts, anxious to hear a man who shunned the barren obscurities of the alchemists, and did not regard the quest of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life as the sole end of his science. He published multiple instructional and informative volumes and dedicated himself to educational pursuits.

Monceau, Duhamel Du

Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1782) was one of the most important French writers on fruit, plant physiology and agriculture, in this field he was one of the outstanding botanists of the eighteenth century and Traité des Arbres Fruitiers is among the finest of fruit books. The first volume begins by describing and illustrating different methods of pruning and grafting. This brief but concise description of techniques encouraged propagation of fruit trees throughout France. His intention was to promote the virtue and nutritional value of fruit-bearing trees. Each plate illustrated the plant’s seed, foliage, blossom, fruit, and sometimes cross sections of the specimen. As pears were Duhamel’s favorite fruit, they constitute the largest percentage of the two volumes.

Sellier, Charles Francois

A painter and a pupil of Leborne, Sellier in 1857 gained the “Prix de Rome” which was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors. Winners were given a bursary that let them stay in Rome for three to five years at the expense of the state. He subsequently became the keeper of the Museum of Nancy. He produced religious paintings as well as botanical images.

Verneuil, M.P.

Maurice Pillard Verneuil was a very well known French artist, designer, and decorator in both the Art Nouveau and Art Deco Movements, working with stylistic undulating and intertwining forms, transforming patterns into elegant ballets between flora and fauna. As his career progressed Verneuil transitioned into his much acclaimed geometric patterns, using bold colors and lines that influenced many others after him.

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