Printmaking Techniques Through the Ages© December 2005 by Terrance M. Wright - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Various printmaking techniques have been utilized over the past several hundred years to generate some of the world’s finest art, on paper. Naturally, as technology has advanced, so also has the art of printmaking. This brief article touches on the evolution of the printmaking art from the 18 th century to the present day. Of course, the wonder of printmaking itself is that it lends itself to mass production, making a less expensive print edition available at lower cost, and therefore within the reach of an increasing audience. This, in turn, aids in circulation and notoriety of the printed work. Gutenberg’s famous press revolutionized the printed word in making multiple copies of a work available without incurring the laborious process of hand-copying each single page. Before we discuss printmaking art, it is instructive to review a brief history of paper for, often, inspection of a work’s paper can aid in identification and a very rough dating. Other aspects of paper provide further clues. In a gross oversimplification, there are two ‘types’ of paper, at least as observed visually (in reality, there are many different categories or types of paper). First, until the early nineteenth century, paper was hand made or hand-laid. Hand-laid paper was made in a mold whose bottom was a screen of interwoven wires. Narrowly spaced horizontal wires were held in place by wider spaced (usually about one inch) ‘chain lines’. The paper mold was dipped into a vat of dissolved (usually cotton) fibers made from rags. As the water drained away through the bottom of the mold, a film of cotton pulp was left, to become a sheet of paper, when dry. Relatively thinner layers of pulp remained over the wires leaving the paper thinner and more transparent in these regions. Thus wire lines and chain lines from the mold left their impression in the paper, which allow it to be identified as hand-laid paper. In some cases, designs were woven into the wire bottom of the mold. These were usually insignias, initials, or emblems of a particular papermaker. The designs, like wire and chain lines, remained visible under backlighting, in sheets of paper made from these molds. Such designs are known as watermarks and can serve to identify paper from various papermakers and paper mills. Hand-laid paper was supplanted in great part beginning around the turn of the 19 th century. A breakthrough in papermaking occurred with the advent of ‘wove’ paper, so named for the tightly woven wires in the new paper-making molds. These tightly woven brass-wire molds left no wire or chain lines, thus providing a more uniform appearing paper sheet. The first recorded American book using wove paper appeared in 1795. That book was Charlotte Smith’s “Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems.” By 1800, wove paper became the standard for book-making and other published works. In 1817, the process of wove papermaking became mechanized, and a French papermaking machine, the Fourdrinier, was introduced in New York, by 1827. Machine made wove paper is manufactured on a continuous wire mold providing more uniform sheets without the rough edges of hand-laid paper. Near the advent of the Civil War, another revolution in papermaking occurred. Until this time, paper was made of cotton or linen rags dissolved in aqueous solutions. In 1855, wood pulp was introduced as a papermaking material. While wood pulp had the advantage of being much cheaper than cotton rags, its fibers were shorter and therefore less strong than cotton. And, wood pulp had the property of being acidic, ensuring long-term degradation of the fibers and the paper made therefrom. By 1882, the process of wood-pulp digestion, using sulfuric acid, was commercialized. Since that time, this has been the preferred method of papermaking in America due to its scale of economy. Fine art or archival paper is still manufactured from cotton fibers. Now, let us turn our attention to the art of print making. Various printmaking techniques have been employed over the ages. These fall into broad categories depending on basic printing principles. The first of these categories we shall review is known as relief printing. The earliest form of relief printing is the woodblock or woodcut technique. In this method, a block of wood has a surface in which is carved an image. The image stands in relief, all areas not to be printed are carved away from the printing face. The wood block is coated with ink on the raised surfaces and then pressed onto a sheet of paper, leaving the monochrome ink outline from the print-block surface. Wood-block plates are made more durable by using the end-grain surface for printing. One example of wood-block printing is:
Intaglio processes utilize an incised metal plate prepared by various techniques, primarily engraving or etching. In both cases, an image to be printed is outlined as recessed grooves in a metal plate, often made of copper, steel, or zinc. In engraving, a sharp engraving tool known as a burin, is used to leaves smooth grooves outlining the image in the metal plate. In etching, a wax or varnish (called ‘ground’) is coated onto the plate and the print image is drawn in this layer with a needle. This drawing process removes the varnish and exposes the metal underneath the plate. Then, the drawn plate is exposed to an acid (typically nitric acid) which ‘bites’ or etches the exposed regions of the plate, leaving permanent grooves outlining the image to be printed. Regions covered by varnish are untouched by the acid. Later, the wax or varnish layer is removed, leaving behind a clean metal plate with clean grooves in an outline of the image to be printed. Variations on this process include mezzotint, stipple, dry-point, and aquatint. In each case, these techniques are used to create shading or gradations of darkness in the printed image. In Mezzotint, this is accomplished by roughening the entire metal plate surface with a mezzotint ‘rocker’ tool. The roughened regions retain more ink, which is transferred to the printed page, thus creating darker regions of the print. By burnishing or smoothing regions treated with the rocker, lighter shading can be produced. Mezzotint is unique in starting from an all-black plate, burnishing to create lighter or white regions of the print. Stipple engraving is a cross between etching and engraving. The plate is prepared with a ground in which small dots are drawn. These patterns of dots are etched into the surface of the plate, whereafter additional work on the plate is done using the burin. Dry-point refers to a technique, like engraving, where a sharp instrument is used to scratch the surface leaving burrs and grooves which will retain ink. Variations in shading are accomplished using different pressures and angles when scratching the metal surface. Finally, aquatint is another etching process used to simulate shading. In this case, a resinous powder is sprinkled on the metal printing plate and heated until it melts and adheres to the plate, in little islands. These regions of the printing plate are again exposed to acid which attacks or etches the underlying exposed metal plate. The plate becomes pitted where there is no protective resin, and these regions are thereby able to hold more ink and transfer a darker image to the printed page, creating the perception of shading. In each of the intaglio methods the master printing plate is inked using a roller, which forces ink into the grooves and pits of the printing plate surface. The inked plate is pressed against a clean sheet of paper in a press. Pressure from the printing press forces ink from the grooved printing plate into the absorbent paper in which it is in intimate contact. The paper is removed from the press and allowed to dry, leaving a monochrome outline image of the printed subject. The image on paper is the mirror image to the one in the printing plate. Intaglio prints were typically colored one-at-a-time, by hand, using watercolors. Engraved lines show fine tapered ends and smooth edges, while etched lines show more rounded ends with ‘rough’ or ‘fuzzy’ edges, under magnification. One example of copper plate engraving with hand color is represented by:
One example of combined copper plate engraving and etching, with hand color, is represented by:
One example of copper plate etching (with engraved plate legends and marginalia) with aquatint and hand color is represented by:
Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Germany in 1798 and, within twenty years, appeared in England and the United States. This technique is a planographic or surface-printing method as opposed to the intaglio techniques; printed and non-printed areas are in the same plane. This process uses a waxy or greasy medium (often a crayon) drawn on a stone or metal plate and relies on the repelling properties of oil and water. Typically, the plate is of limestone. The image outline drawn in crayon is etched slightly into the surface of the stone using a mixture of acid and gum arabic. The original crayon is then removed using a turpentine solution. Ink and turpentine are then used to wet the surface of the stone where the image is defined; the gum arabic remains to protect other areas of the stone, which are not inked. Next, the gum is removed and the stone is inked with printers’ ink, using a roller. The stone and a clean sheet of dampened paper are brought into contact in a press. Under pressure from the press, ink is transferred from the stone to the paper leaving a black and white image. Stone lithographs were typically hand colored individually using watercolors. The following publications used this printing technology.
Unlike previous methods described, chromolithography is a multicolor printmaking process. It utilizes a separate printing plate for each color. The print is created by impressing each plate to a single sheet, in sequence, to create the final colored image. One challenge of this printmaking technology is the need to ‘register’ or align each plate exactly, to the printed image. The chief advantage of chromolithography was the mass production of colored images without the need for the time consuming and laborious hand coloring of images. And, the long life of the lithographic plates ensured thousands of identical imprints could be made of each printed image. Chromolithographic prints are often identifiable from a blotchy appearance (and lack of brush marks) under magnification. Tinted lithography is a process whereby the main (black and white) image is created using a primary stone, and a background tint or color is applied with one or two secondary stones used to apply the colored background. A publication using this tinted lithography process process is:
More advanced chromolithography was employed in making:
Photomechanical printing was the next major advance in printmaking technology, with the advent of photography in 1820, photolithography in 1850 and the invention of photogravure in 1879. Photomechanical methods include line-cuts, half tones, photogravures, photolithographs and collotypes. Each of these processes has in common the lack of need for a skilled artist. Photomechanical means are used to reproduce or copy works of original art via photographic processes. The image to be reproduced is first photographed, and that image is projected onto one or more printing plates or screens. For example, in the photogravure process, a copper plate is coated with a light-sensitive gelatin, exposed to a negative, and then etched. The result is a high quality print reproducing the continuous tones of a photograph. One common feature of many photomechanical prints is the use of halftone screens. These are produced using a process where gradations of tone in a photograph, or drawing are transformed into small dots by being photographed through a fine screen. These dots simulate the grey levels by reducing tones to a series of dots varying in size and density in proportion to the tones they represent. A separate printing plate is prepared for each color to be printed. Offset printing presses transfer the image from each inked plate to a rubber roller which, in turn, transfers the image to a sheet of paper. The paper is offset from the plate by the roller, hence the name, offset printing. This process leaves images comprising a regular matrix of small colored dots, usually visible under slight magnification. Collotype printing is another photo-based process utilizing a photosensitive gelatin on a glass plate. Collotype printing is discernable as the small printed dots comprising the image are irregular in shape. Photolithography with offset printing was used to create:
An example of collotype printing is represented by:
Digital printing is the most modern of printing techniques to be used in the reproduction of fine art. Unique to this process is the lack of any intermediate printing plate. Typically, original works are scanned digitally using a ‘scanner’ to capture the image to be printed. This image is stored electronically on a computer hard disk, CD or DVD and may be manipulated using special software to correct colors, eliminate imperfections or defects in the original copy, or make other adjustments to the final print. Digital printing is often referred to as ‘Giclee’, but this is just a fancy name for ink jet printing. Professional ink jet printers and inks are of higher quality than those used in the home or small business, but the technology is basically the same. Because there is no printing plate to prepare, or press to set up, Giclee printing is well suited for making short runs, or printing on demand. This is in contrast to prior methods where a ‘press run’ is usually made to produce many copies at a time, to avoid the cumbersome, time consuming and expensive process of setting up the presses. Additionally, the lack of a mechanical printing plate in digital reproduction means each image should reproduce exactly as the first; there are no plates to wear out under use. Examples of prints made using digital scanning and Giclee printing are:
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