The Art of Reproduction

by

Lauren Roberts

Reproduction in an artistic sense refers to the duplication of text and images. Drawing, painting, sculpting, woodcutting, engraving, etching, lithograph, photography and the computer are all methods (listed roughly in chronological order of development) that allow such reproductions.

One of the most complex and beautiful of reproductive methods, woodcuts are designs cut into blocks of wood; they require that the artist first sketch a design on the flat surface of a soft wood, then cut straight lines into it, leaving the design of the print in relief. In the early fifteenth century, woodcuts began to be used in three types of printmaking: playing cards, religious pictures and book illustrations. Book illustrations soon led to block printing, which allowed for both text and illustration to be printed on the same page, a financial and production boon to the business of printing with moveable type. But woodcuts cannot produce subtle, fine lines, and the demand for more complex images soon gave rise to engraving on metal plates.

Engraving is not so much a child of woodcutting as of jewelry making. To make a metal engraving, a tool called a burin or graver is used. This is a bar of steel with one end fixed in a handle shaped vaguely like a mushroom with one side cut away an the point downward. The design in an engraving is the part that is cut away. This is known as the intaglio method, a different result from woodcutting where only negative spaces and lines are hollowed. The engraver uses one hand to steady and move the plate and the other hand to cut, adding more pressure for thickness of lines. To make a print, ink is rubbed into the engraving and printed under intense pressure. Line engravings allowed for complex designs and shading techniques by engraving cross-hatching patterns, successive straight lines and various other repetitive patterns. The result includes nuances, halftones and brilliance that woodcuts, due to their fragile and fibrous nature, cannot not equal.

The oldest examples of engraving we have today dates from about 1430. But it was Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), a German painter, printmaker, draughtsman and art theorist who elevated the method to art. His greatest engravings include the famous St. Jerome in His Study and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Dürer’s work is  powerful, and through his mastery of it he exercised considerable influence on engravers of his time. Not surprisingly, he attracted not only admirers, but imitators who copied his work and even counterfeited his monogram. (In one of the first cases of enforced copyright, Dürer did manage to stop such plagiarism.)

Up to about 1820, copper was the preferred choice of metal for engraving because it was relatively soft. It gave the artist considerable freedom, but the engraved lines could never be made overly fine as would later happen with steel. In addition, the softness, meant that the prints produced from it would deteriorate in quality after a relatively short run, and the metal would have to be reworked. While not altogether a negative—it allowed for quick alterations such as updating maps and offered higher quality—it did not make book illustrations any less expensive or any faster than woodcuts.

During the 1820s, steel began to overtake copper for several reasons: it is a much harder plate so it could be used for many more reproductions before wear became noticeable. Steel also allowed for much finer detail in which it became possible to distinguish individual lines with a magnifying glass. Not surprisingly, the hardness of steel made engraving more difficult, and by the mid-nineteenth century, engravings were no longer the work of one artist, but of many who specialized in various techniques and even by a “ruling machine” which could engrave large numbers of close parallel lines.

According to Steve Bartrick, the way to distinguish between copper and steel engravings is to first check the date. “If it's before 1821 it will be copper, if after 1830 almost certainly steel,” he notes. “If it is undated, or between these dates, one can still usually tell from the style of engraving. With copper engravings areas of parallel lines are further apart, the lines look heavier and the impression has an overall softer, warmer feel. Steel engravings have an almost silvery feel, the parallel and cross-hatched lines are much closer together and sharper.”

Steel engraving was introduced by Jacob Perkins (1766-1849), an American inventor, who developed a process of softening steel for the purpose of engraving and hardening it for the purpose of printing. He was not thinking artistically, but practically. How, he wondered, could the forgery of bank notes be prevented? Though his invention was patented in the United States in 1799, and in England in 1810,  it was in London  that engravers began to think about an artistic use of his invention. An art society offered a medal for “the best specimen of engraving on a steel plate,” and by 1821 several satisfactory steel engravings had emerged including that of Charles Heath. Heath is widely acknowledged for recognizing the financial advantage of Perkins’ use of steel, and he is credited with producing the first published plates on steel for Thomas Campbell's book, Pleasures of Hope in 1820.
 
Heath is primarily if not solely responsible for the battle that raged between copper and steel for illustrations for the next several decades. But by 1870 steel had won out.  As noted by Saxonia:

The differences . . .  are extremely subtle, but they are real and came as the result of the materials used and the stressing of commercialism.. Steel engravers were good draughtsmen but extremely matter-of-fact and slavish in their adherence to copy. They were not allowed the freedom of interpretation that the older copper plate men enjoyed. They used ruling machines for places, such as the sky, where an even tone was wanted, and later machines were developed that cut the lines for several other portions of the compositions, all of which only further served to take from the work all spontaneity and intensified its mechanical appearance.  Steel engravings are usually unsympathetically printed in ink that lacks warmth, and they have about them an air of crisp, cold self-righteousness.

Crisp, cold self-righteousness? Well, I don’t know about that. While I neither collect engravings or know anything about them beyond the research for this column, I do know that when I first saw these bookmarks for sale I gasped at their beauty. The images are exquisite and the engraving stunning. I suppose connoisseurs of the art might turn up their noses at them, but obviously they were produced with pride. They were probably meant as advertising vehicles for Farmer, Livermore and Co.

Steel engraving was used on these bookmarks because that was the business of the firm that produced them. Despite apparent success, the company seems to have drifted quietly into the fogs of history leaving behind only this brief paragraph from the King’s Pocket-book of Providence, R.I. (1882):

FARMER & CO., E. G., successors to Farmer, Livermore, & Co., are the only steel-engravers in Rhode Island, and one of the few firms in this line whose customers extend throughout the United States. They have been established four years, and have already earned a reputation for executing the highest grades of steel-engraving. The senior partner, E. G. Farmer, jrn., (sic) has been in this same business for 12 years, having been connected at various times with the American and Continental Bank-Note Companies of New York, and with John A. Lowell & Co. of Boston. The premises of E. G. Farmer & Co. include the third floor of the Rose Building, a fine brick structure with granite trimmings, situated at No. 18 Custom-house St., directly opposite the Custom House. The equipment of the establishment embraces all the machinery and appliances requisite for executing all varieties of steel-engraving for corporations, societies, firms, and individuals. Bonds, certificates of stock, stationery, wedding and social invitations, business and personal cards, circulars, etc., comprise part of the regular work constantly doing; while elaborate engraving for programmes, menus, and special occasions, is promptly and exquisitely executed. Steel-engraving has become recognized as one of the fine arts; and, in order to compete successfully with all firms, E. G. Farmer & Co. constantly employ noted and artistic designers, and experienced and skilled engravers, use the best materials, and put the finest finish on all their work.

I value these bookmarks in part because they represent a time and technique that has since been replaced. As copper engravings replaced woodcuts, as steel replaced copper, as photography replaced engraving, as the Xerox and Photostat came along and finally the computer, I find there is something special about having ties to past technologies. A sense of memory, perhaps, that if not my own then that of art?

Bookmark specifications: Unnamed scenes
Dimensions: 6 3/4” x 2 1/2”
Material: Heavy cardboard with gilt edges
Manufacturer: Farmer, Livermore & Co.
Date: 1880
Acquired: eBay
 

Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately 1,200 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.