Stipple engraving

Stipple engraving is a technique used to create tone in an intaglio print by distributing a pattern of dots of various sizes and densities across the image.

[4] In Holland in the seventeenth century, the printmaker and goldsmith Jan Lutma developed an engraving technique, known as opus mallei, in which the dots are punched into the plate by an awl struck with a hammer, while in England the faces of portraits were engraved with stippled dots by William Rogers in the sixteenth century and Lucas Vorsterman in the seventeenth.

Gilles Demarteau used in 1756 goldsmith's chasing tools and marking-wheels to shade the lines in a series of Trophies designed by Antoine Watteau.

[3][5] William Wynne Ryland, who had worked with Jean-Charles François,[2] took the crayon manner to Britain, using it in his contributions to Charles Roger’s publication A Collection of Prints in imitation of Drawings,[3] and developing it further under the name of "stipple engraving".

The lighter areas of shade are then laid in with a drypoint or a stipple graver; Fielding describes the latter as "resembling the common kind, except that the blade bends down instead of up, thereby allowing the engraver greater facility in forming the small holes or dots in the copper".

[7] In France the technique fed a fashion for reproductions of red chalk drawings by artists such as Antoine Watteau and François Boucher.