Catalogues - Engravings

The Atelier Collection is an historic collection of hand-pulled and hand-coloured engravings and a small selection of hand-coloured prints. Rosenstiel's has built up the collection since the company was founded in 1880 and the original copper plates from which the prints are pulled span two centuries of print history. Each print is painstakingly pulled by skilled craftsmen, using techniques which have changed little over the last four hundred years. Most images are then hand-coloured by a skilled watercolourist, whilst some are carefully inked in the plate.

Glossary

Aquatint

Aquatint is so called because plates etched by this method produce prints with the effect of watercolour - superficially, at least. The polished plate is sprinkled evenly with resin or asphaltum, either by hand (through a muslin filter) or in a specially constructed box in which the powder is agitated and then descends like a light snowfall onto the plate. the plate is heated until the grains of resin or asphaltum melt and adhere to it in tiny globules. On immersion in an acid solution the areas of metal exposed between the globules are attacked or bitten into and the required image is produced by successive immersions, between which the biting is controlled by stopping out appropriate areas of the plate with acid-resistant varnish. Areas bitten for the shortest time produce the palest tones; those bitten longest and therefore most deeply, print darkest. Globules and varnish are removed with solvents before printing.

Blankets

Blankets used for intaglio printing are made of fine woollen felt. It is usual to lay from three to five blankets over the plate and paper during printing. They provide resilience, pressing the damp, supple paper into the ink-laden crevices of the plate.

Burin

Also called a graver, this is a tool used for making incisions in metal plates. It consists of a slender steel rod, four or five inches long, square or lozenge-shaped in cross-section and mounted in a bulbous wooden handle. The end of the rod is ground and sharpened at an oblique angle to form the cutting point.

Burnisher

A steel tool with a smooth rounded point, used for polishing those parts of a mezzotint plate's surface which are to hold little or no ink and are thus to print lightest.

Dabber

A mushroom-shaped implement for applying ink to the surface of a plate. A metal or wooden disc to which a handle is attached is padded and covered with thin leather which, in turn, is often covered with a piece of fine felt.

Drypoint

A method of producing an intaglio print by simply scoring the metal plate with a steel or diamond point, pulled across the surface towards the engraver. The tool displaces (rather than removes) the metal, raising a ridge alongside each furrow. The ridge (called a burr) retains ink when the plate is wiped and prints a characteristically soft, velvety line.

Engraving

A term often loosely used to refer to all intaglio prints. Strictly speaking, though, an engraving is a print made from a plate engraved with a burin or graver rather than through the action of acid. Engraving and etching are of course frequently combined in a single plate. An engraved line may be distinguished by its crispness from the rather more ragged line bitten by acid.

Etching

Etchings are prints made from metal plates whose crevices are formed through the action of acid. The image is drawn with a needle (or etching point) through a thin layer of wax on the plate. The plate is then placed in acid so that the lines of the drawing are bitten in. Both extent and the depth of the biting can be controlled by successive immersions in the acid, intermittently protecting with an acid-resistant varnish those parts of the plate where biting is judged to have gone far enough. The general principle: the most deeply bitten areas print blackest.

Etching ground

A ball or cake of wax which softens and melts on contact with a heated plate, across whose surface it is thinly and evenly spread to form a protection against acid. When the wax cools and hardens the plate is ready to be worked

Etching point

Popularly called an etching needle. This is the implement used for drawing through the layer of wax on a metal plate.

Ground colour

The neutral colour worked into the crevices of a plate before superimposition of the full range of colours in single-plate colour printing.

Hand colouring

The application of transparent washes of watercolour to black and white prints.

Huntings

The print-publishing trade's shorthand for hunting scenes.

Impression

The generic term for all prints.

Intaglio prints and printing

Intaglio prints are prints made from metal plates engraved by hand or by the action of acid. The paper receives ink from the crevices of the plate rather than (as in relief prints) from the unengraved or unbitten surface. the printing is begun by working ink into the heated plate and subsequently wiping the surface clean, leaving all the crevices filled with the pigment. Damped paper is laid on the inked plate, then - for resilience - several layers of woollen felt blanket, and the whole sandwich is passed between the rollers of the press. the pressure is such, and the dampness of the paper so calculated, that the ink is transferred from the plate's indentations to the paper to yield the print, the sunken plate-mark and the raised quality of the lines being evidence of the process.

Line engraving

An engraving in which all the contours, tones and textures are expressed in line, usually incised with a burin or graver, but also frequently etched. A complicated vocabulary of linear pattern was evolved by line-engravers: skies, architecture, vegetation, water, draperies and flesh each receiving special and distinct treatment.

Mezzotint

The process was first used in the mid-seventeenth century by the German, Ludwig von Siegen, and was developed by Prince Rupert whilst he was in exile in Frankfurt after the English Civil War. The method was extensively used in England during the eighteenth century, mainly for the reproduction of portraits, and was taken up again (though frequently mixed with other techniques) by many engravers in the 1830s. The surface of the plate is evenly and systematically roughened all over with a rocker (a tool like a chisel with a short, broad blade whose cutting edge is curved and serrated). The dense texture raised by the rocker will print solid black. The engraver achieves the full tonal range in the final print by proceeding from this black to the lighter tones, scraping and burnishing the textured surface of the plate to varying degrees. The areas left roughest retain most ink and therefore print blackest; those polished smoothest retain little or no ink, and thus provide the highlights.

Mixed mezzotint

When in the 1830s mezzotint became once more popular in reproductive engraving, it was seldom used in its pure form. For speed (to satisfy impatient publishers), tones and textures were built up in a combination of mezzotint, etching and engraving, and the roulette was used as freely as the mezzotint rocker in the making of what came to be known as mixed mezzotints or, simply, mixed engravings.

Muller

A roughly hemispherical lump of marble of a size convenient to grasp in both hands. The muller is worked backwards and forwards over a stone or glass slab, its flat surface grinding powdered pigment and linseed oil into a smooth, stiff printing ink.

Photogravure

Photogravure involves the photographic transfer of an original image to a light-sensitive ground on a metal plate. The ground reacts in such a way that it will ultimately allow a mordant to attack the metal in exact conformity with the tonal patterns of the original. The process ensures that the plate's surface is pock-marked so as to retain ink, and is thus intaglio. Inking and printing are carried out precisely as for all other kinds of intaglio plate except that a slightly thinner ink is required. The process became so popular in the 1890s that it threatened to eclipse hand engraving.

Plank

The flat bed of a rolling-press, so called because (although eventually supplanted by iron) originally made of hard wood. Wooden planks were up to 2" (5cm.) thick and were tapered at one end to allow easy insertion between the press's rollers.

Prints or Plain Prints

The typical edition of a 19th-century engraving included Artist's Proofs, Presentation Proofs, Proofs before Letters and Lettered Proofs, all in limited numbers. In addition, impressions with no numerical restriction (except one imposed by the plate's condition) were made.
Such impressions were sold more cheaply than the earlier states. For example, Artist's Proofs of Landseer's 'Monarch of the Glen' were sold at 10 guineas, Proofs before Letters at 8, Lettered Proofs at 5, and Prints at only 3. These formalities do not seem to have been observed in the case of popular sporting prints.

Printing a la Poupée

The term for intaglio printing in a full range of colours from a single plate. After the ground colour has been applied, all the other colours are laid in one by one with small rolls (or dollies) of muslin. The complete colour print is then obtained by a single passage through the press.

Proof

An impression taken whilst engraving is in progress to enable the artist and/or engraver to make decisions about the further development of the work. During the 19th century the word took on a different meaning when it became customary to produce limited numbers of proofs to be sold at a higher price than the unrestricted impressions that formed the bulk of a publication.

Proof Before Letters

In such a proof there are usually no publication details in the margin above the print. Instead, they appear beneath the work. There is at this stage no engraved title, but the artist's and engraver's names appear: the former at the left and the latter at the right.

Publication line

This includes the name and address of publisher or publishers, date and place of publication, and any copyright details. All this usually appears in a single engraved line either just above the top edge or just below the bottom edge of the work. All lettering on plates was undertaken by specialist lettering engravers.

Reproductive Engraving

An engraving reproducing an original painting or drawing as distinct from a completely autonomous print.

Rolling-press

The rolling-press (also called an etching-press or a copper-plate press) consists simply of a frame supporting two rollers between which a flat plank or bed passes horizontally under pressure. Rolling-presses were invariably of wood (the framework often of oak and the rollers of elm or lignum vitae) until gradually replaced by iron models from about 1830. In simpler presses, pressure was adjusted by means of packing. More usually it was (and is) regulated by pressure screws. Ungeared presses are usually fitted with long arms radiating from the spindle of the upper roller. Geared presses are usually fitted with a large fly-wheel

Roulette

An implement with a small toothed wheel. The wheel may be evenly or randomly patterned and can be used to make indentations on bare metal or to pierce the wax ground of a plate which is then bitten with acid.

Ruling Machine

A device for reducing the labour of ruling parallel lines on a plate. These were often used with great delicacy to create sky effects.

Scraper

A steel tool used in the first stages of erasing unwanted passages from an engraved or etched plate or for smoothing areas of a mezzotint or an aquatint plate. The process is normally completed with a burnisher.

Scraping

This is the term usually given to the work done on a mezzotint plate. After the textured ground has been prepared, the scraper and burnisher are the chief tools used in the mezzotint process.

Soft-ground Etching

The wax used in etching is usually hard; that is, it solidifies after application as the plate cools, and can then be handled without disturbance. However, a softer wax will take the imprint of a thumb or finger through to the bare metal; soft-ground etching is a process which takes advantage of this. For example, thin grease-proof paper can be laid on a plate grounded with soft wax; pencil lines made on the paper will lift the wax from the plate beneath. A drawing can in this way be reproduced in the wax and subsequently bitten into the plate in the usual manner.

Steel facing

A method of depositing by electrolysis a thin protective coating of steel (or, more accurately, iron) onto a copper plate to prolong its printing life.

Soft-ground Etching

A stipple engraver pierces the wax ground of the plate with a series of pecks (often in imitation of the granular effect of a crayon - 'the chalk manner' - using an etching point or a burin. Each peck reveals a dot of bare metal which is subsequently attacked by acid to create a small pit. Stipple engraving became popular in England largely through the work of the Florentine expatriate Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815).