Line engraving

Steel engraving is an overlapping term, for images that in fact are often mainly in etching, mostly used for banknotes, illustrations for books, magazines and decorative prints, often reproductive, from about 1820 to the early 20th century, when the technique became less used.

Intaglio engravings are made by carving into a plate of a hard substance such as copper, zinc, steel, or plastic.

Wood engraving is a relief printing technique, with the images made by carving into fine-grained hardwood blocks.

The goldsmiths of Florence in the middle of the 15th century ornamented their works by means of engraving, after which they filled up the hollows produced by the burin with a black enamel-like substance made of silver, lead, and sulfur.

It was discovered later that a proof could be taken on damped paper by filling the engraved lines with ink and wiping it off the surface of the plate.

Although goldsmiths continued to engrave nielli to ornament plates and furniture, it was not until the late 15th century that the new method of printing was implemented.

In early Italian and German prints, the line is used with such perfect simplicity of purpose that the methods of the artists are as obvious as if we saw them actually at work.

The characteristics of early metal engraving in Germany are demonstrated in the works of Martin Schongauer (d. 1488) and Albrecht Dürer (d. 1528).

Dürer continued Schongauer's curved shading, with increasing manual delicacy and skill, and over-loaded his plates with quantities of living and inanimate objects.

Instead of his finished paintings, Rubens provided his engravers with drawings as guides, allowing them to discard the Italian outline method and in its place substitute modeling.

Sir Robert Strange, as many other English engravers, made it his study to soften and lose the outline, specifically in figure-engraving.

Line-engraving flourished in France until the early 20th century, only through official encouragement and intelligent fostering by collectors and connoisseurs.

Nineteenth-century line engraving, compared with previous work, had a more thorough and delicate rendering of local color, light and shade, and texture.

Considered as important an influence upon engraving as Raphael and Rubens, Turner contributed much to the field in the direction of delicacy of tone.

The new French school of engraving had several distinctive characteristics, including the substitution of exquisite greys for the rich blacks of old and, simplicity of method coupled with extremely high elaboration.

Their object is, as always, to secure the faithful transcript of the painter they reproduce while readily sacrificing the power of the old method, which, whatever its force and beauty, was easily acquired by mediocre artists of technical ability.

He began while employed by the Israeli Minit in Tel Aviv in an experiment to create state engraved stamps.

The scene was crowded by thirty-some figures fashioned in a composition inspired by his oil painting The Wedding, collection of the Spertus University, Chicago.

Although dwindled to a rarity, modern engravers continue to practice in the art world, most prominently Andrew Raftery.

[1] The most important of the tools used in line-engraving is the burin, or graver, a bar of steel with one end fixed in a handle, somewhat resembling a mushroom with one side cut away.

Finally, the gradations from the thick middle of the curve to the thin points touching the vertical are worked out with a finer burin.

When the surface of a metal plate is sufficiently polished to be used for engraving, the slightest scratch upon it will print as a black line.