This post is the fifth installment in a series on how books were made in the 15th-18th centuries. Previous posts detail papermaking, type foundry, the composition of text, and the printing process.
Think back to your earliest memories with books. You’re young, cute, and curious. You might be nestled in the lap of an adult reading to you, or perhaps you’re lying on the floor by yourself, flipping through the pages and looking at the pictures beside the words. From the very beginning, illustrations have been essential enhancements and compliments to the text.
Artists began adding woodcut illustrations to books within years of Western innovations in printing technology and moveable type. The Library has within its collections of incunabula (books printed before 1501) many books that combine text and images, often printed together on the same page.
One of the earliest illustrated books is the Biblia Pauperum (1470), a compendium of select scriptural passages intended to provide devotional material for the common clergy. This block book presents passages from the Old and New Testament accompanied by woodcut illustrations.
Woodcut printing, a technique mastered in China as early as the 3rd century, was the first method used to print images alongside composed text. The artist would start with a square or rectangular block of wood that was the exact height of a piece of metal type. Into this block of wood (typically pear, plywood, cherry, or birch), artists would use sharp tools to carve the design in relief, meaning that the spaces where they carved into the woodblock would not receive ink and would be the negative, white area of the illustration; the design that remains on the surface of the woodblock after the artist cut away the negative space would be inked and printed. Because the block began as the same height as a piece of type, this uncarved part of the woodblock would remain “type high” and would be inked along with the text to be printed and locked into the same forme as the composed text.
Some early printed books include hand-painted woodcut illustrations, such as those seen in the Teutch Passion (1490) and Aesop’s Fables (1501). This practice of adding color by hand to each copy of a printed book harkens back to the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
Another popular technique of printed illustration is engraving, where an artist uses a sharp tool called a burin to carve an image into a thin plate of metal – usually a soft metal such as copper. The engraver presses the burin into the copperplate to create grooves in the shape of the desired design. The deeper the groove, the darker the line in the eventual image. Artists also employed cross-hatching techniques to create various tones in the composition.
Whereas woodcut illustrations are cut in relief (meaning that what is carved out of the wood is not printed), engraving allows the artist to design the image directly (what is carved out of the copper is printed). This process is reversed because engravings were not printed on the same sort of press used to print text and woodcuts; rather, engravings were printed in a separate process using an intaglio press.
In the intaglio printing process, a leather dauber applies ink deeply into the grooves carved into the metal plate, and the surface is then wiped clean. A piece of paper is positioned on top of the plate, and the plate and paper together are rolled under the tremendous pressure of an intaglio press (like a giant rolling pin). The intense pressure forces the ink in the grooves to release onto the paper. The force involved in this printing process is so strong that it leaves an impression at the edges of where the plate pressed into the paper. Looking or feeling for this impression around the edge of the image is one easy way to identify whether an illustration is an engraving or a woodcut.
Because these illustrations were printed on a different sort of press than those used to print text, these pages were usually printed in a different printshop and were later inserted into the pages containing the text. A bold book designer might send the sheets of printed text to the intaglio workshop in hopes that the copperplate illustration would be added to the correct page in the correct position.
In the image above on the left, the process of printing a copperplate illustration onto a previously printed page has been accomplished successfully with the correct alignment; the illustration intended for page 81 has been perfectly placed. However, in the image above on the right, the copperplate engraving has been printed on top of the previously printed textual matter. Sometimes, mistakes can tell us more about how a book was made than can perfectly executed techniques.
Similar to engraving, etching is another form of metalcut illustration that uses an intaglio press to print the design. However, rather than the image being carved into the metal with a sharp tool, etching uses acid to burn grooves into the metal. The process begins with a metal plate being covered with a layer of wax or varnish (called a ground) that later acts as a protective barrier between the metal and the acid. The artist uses an etching needle to draw the image by scraping away the layer of wax, exposing the metal beneath. Then, the plate is submerged in a bath of nitric acid and water. The acid burns or “bites” smooth grooves into the plate where the metal was exposed by the scraping of the artist’s needle; where the acid-resistant wax remains, the plate is not affected. If an artist desires tonal differences within the composition, wax can be re-applied to certain areas of the plate before dipping it back into the acid, allowing the acid to dig deeper grooves where the metal remains exposed. Once the artist has created the desired grooves, the layer of wax is removed from the plate with a solvent. Now the plate is ready to be inked and printed on the intaglio press in the same manner as used for engraving.
The etching technique has the artistic benefits of creating smoother, rounder lines and more delicate images. The artist’s ability to create tonal variety allows for more naturalistic detailing, as seen in the clouds, trees, and flora depicted in the etching above.
Throughout the history of printed text, images have enhanced and supported the reading experience. Hopefully, learning about the artistic techniques used to create illustrations inspires even greater appreciation for the history of the book.
Sources and Further Reading
Brunner, F. (1962). A Handbook of Graphic Reproduction Processes. Niggli.
De Simone, D., ed. (2004). A Heavenly Craft: The Woodcut in Early Printed Books. Library of Congress.
Gascoigne, B. (2004). How to Identify Prints. Thames & Hudson.
Martin, J. (1993). The Encyclopedia of Printmaking Techniques. Sterling.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Etching.” The Materials and Techniques of Drawings and Prints. metmuseum.org.
Werner, S. (2019). Studying Early Printed Books: 1450-1800. Wiley Blackwell.