A wood engraving is an engraving made with a graver, upon a cross section of box-wood, that is upon the end, and not the side, of a plank, in relief. As in the case of mechanical engraving, all the wood, excepting that underneath the design upon the block, is cut away, and the picture remains alone in relief, raised upon the surface of the block of the same height as the type; thus the block may be placed on the press and printed with the type.

The first great wood engraver was Thos. Bewick, and he, unlike many of his followers to-day, was an artist, and mostly made his own drawings on the block and cut them as he wished. He saw that wood engraving was a substitute for the slower, more tedious, and more expensive method of steel engraving; that, most important, many of the qualities of steel could be imitated in wood, as the same tools were used; that it could be printed with type; and, save that the richness of colour could not be retained, that it had most of the advantages of metal and few of its disadvantages, and was vastly cheaper. From the first, the imitation of steel was considered the proper aim, and though early in this century Stothard drew with a pen upon the block, and his designs were facsimiled in the wood by Clennell, the prevailing fashion was the imitation of steel engraving, even by Bewick himself. Many of his lines are exactly those used by the steel engravers. By the middle of the century steel engraving virtually disappeared, its practitioners being unable to compete with wood engravers. There have been but few original engravers in this form of art, and though the work of some of the steel engravers who reproduced Turner and Roberts, Wilkie and Landseer, is marvellous, the art is almost dead at present. Cheapness has killed it. Wood engraving also killed lithography—a lithograph cannot be printed with type—and consequently the wood engraver became a most important person. He ran a shop with many assistants; he commissioned artists to make drawings for his assistants to engrave, he dictated the way in which these drawings were to be done, the way in which the lines were to be drawn and washes made, so that they could be cut most easily. He commissioned writers to work up or down to the artists; he printed the books and sold them to the publishers, who were content to put their names on the title pages. And by this method much good and more bad work was accomplished, but the engraver finally became supreme, autocratic, dictatorial, insufferable; and then he vanished, as a shop. Process stepped in, in its turn, on account of its cheapness; and to-day, unless the engraver is an artist, he is but the slave of the process man, a hard fate—but his own. Before the introduction of photography, artists had to make their designs for the wood engraver the size they were wanted upon the block of wood, if portraits of places, reverse them, in pen, brush, pencil, or wash; the engraver cut around and through these designs, making a translation of them in relief on the block which could be printed from. But the drawing had disappeared, and the artist had nothing but the engraving to show for it, hence endless difficulties arose; good artists hated to have their drawings cut to pieces; good engravers hated to have their work criticised unfavourably; also, drawing of a small size, and in reverse on the block was difficult to learn, and only a mechanical craft of no artistic advantage when learned. Therefore, as soon as it was possible to escape from the drudgery, to draw of any size on paper and have that drawing photographed on to a sensitised wood block, of the size it was wanted, in reverse, all artists took to it. And a new school of engravers arose, men who tried to invent new methods of engraving so that they could express the medium, as well as the subject, in which a picture was produced. True from Stothard onward, through Meissonier and Menzel, engravers had tried to render pen and pencil drawings in line on wood; now everything began to be attempted, charcoal, etchings, steel, water colours, lithographs, oils. All the imperfections, accidents, and blemishes were preserved, even if the picture disappeared. But a number of most distinguished artist wood engravers appeared, especially in America, though few of them learned their trade in that country. But they received more encouragement, better pay, better printing, and better artists worked for them. And so the school of American wood engravers, many of whom are not Americans, was born.

Now how is the modern work done? The artist’s picture in any medium, of any size, is given to the photographer, who copies and reverses it, prints it on the block of wood which has been sensitised for that purpose. The print is usually not very good, that is, it is darker, with many of the qualities of the drawing lost; but it serves only as a guide or a tracing for the engraver, who takes his tools, and with the drawing behind him, reflected in a mirror to reverse it, proceeds to cut the photograph of the drawing into relief, at the same time trying to preserve the look of the canvas, paper, or metal on which it was made, and the feeling of the colour, wash, or paint with which it was executed. All this is most difficult, but a most artistic result may be obtained, and one has but to refer to the magazines of America and some of the weekly papers of Germany, France, and Spain, for a proof of it.

Here, though much good wood engraving has been printed, outside the offices of Messrs. Macmillan, Cassell and Co., and the Graphic, it has of late years been mostly in the form of copies, electrotypes, clichés from foreign blocks which are supplied by their makers, all over the world, at a very low price, because they are not reserved for any one paper or book. And when you begin to see a man’s painting, or drawing, or engraving in every paper, you begin to tire of him and his work. The editors of papers which publish clichés seem to be the only people who like the multiplication and cheapening of art, but then there is no accounting for their tastes. The tools and appliances for making wood engravings are simple enough, but to engrave anything but facsimile work, or your own designs, will necessitate your going through considerable practical training; probably some years of apprenticeship.

To cut line drawings on the wood, or to cut designs in large simple masses, you do not require so much practice. All the tools you need are different sized gravers and gouges, a small chisel to cut large spaces, an engraver’s rest for the block, so that it can be turned freely and easily about, and a whetstone to sharpen your tools.

Lamps and globes for water, shades for your eyes, you will scarcely need, but a magnifying glass, something like that which watchmakers use, may be useful. With these simple tools and some box-wood—they can all be bought in East Harding Street or at any colour maker’s—you have the necessary appliances.

If you draw on the block, a slight wash of Chinese white will help to make it work easily. Draw with a brush or pencil; or if in wash, without body colour, as that will chip off. You have only to remember that the block, either plain or with the drawing on it, would print perfectly black, and that every line you make with the graver in the surface of it, will print white. Therefore, as I have said, to get an outline engraving, you simply cut away everything but the drawing, which is left in relief on the surface of the block, and which alone prints, the rest of it being cut away. It is not necessary to engrave the surface very deeply, only so much that neither the ink nor the paper will touch in the hollows between the lines or masses. Mistakes are not easy to remedy, except by making a hole in the block and inserting a plug of wood, and then engraving that afresh.

The art of engraving in facsimile, that is, of engraving around lines made with pen, or brush, or pencil, is comparatively easy, it only requires much training and a steady hand. But the ability to translate a work in colour into black and white, on a wood block, so that it shall give a good idea of the original, is far more difficult. To do it well, the engraver must not only have the knowledge of the technical requirements of his craft at his finger ends, only to be gained after years of apprenticeship, but he must be a trained artist as well. If he wishes to get the best results, he must have the original before him, he must understand it and appreciate it. And finally, he must have the technical skill to engrave it. Even then, most likely, the artist will not like the block. It is a difficult art, a thankless art, save in the rarest cases: one which requires years of special training, and at present in this country, no matter how great an artist one is, there is very little chance to practise it. Work of this sort you cannot expect to be able to do without years of training; if you care for it you must apprentice yourself to a wood engraver.

Still there are forms of wood engraving which you may take up, from the most primitive to the most complicated, and you may carry out the work from the designing of it to the printing of it yourselves, or, you may draw on the block and cut away, as in engravings by the late R. L. Stevenson (or were they done by Lloyd Osbourne or some other ghost?), and possibly you will have an experience like this:—

Or I imagine without much trouble you might invent something in the style of Valloton, a Frenchman, who is resurrecting wood cutting in a manner of his own, while carrying on the traditions of the old men. I hope you may be able to get as much life and go in it as he has. Make your drawing on the wood, or on paper, have it photographed on the wood in the latter case, and cut around the lines, leaving only the drawing. The greatest difficulty is with fine lines, and you see how cleverly Valloton has avoided making them. Or, like Lepère, another French artist—he would be a man to study with—do big, bold, effective things; or again you might attempt, as he does, colour work on wood, like that done by the Japanese, drawing it, engraving it, and printing it all yourselves.

Or, take up drawing and engraving in the manner of Caldecott, Crane, or Kate Greenaway, when they were reproduced and printed by Edmund Evans.

Process is fighting for colour too, but wood, at least in proofs, and that is all you would care for, gives some qualities far beyond process.

In colour printing from wood blocks as many blocks must be made as there are colours, and there must be as many separate printings made from these blocks as there are colours in the printed picture. There must also be an outline block called the key block. Usually in European colour printing, whether from wood blocks, or by lithography, or even process, the colours are printed on top of each other; for example, a blue is printed over a yellow to get green, and at times several colours are superimposed, with the result that colour is lost and mud obtained. The Japanese have shown us how to make colour prints, however, and their method is now adopted by all intelligent colour printers. It consists in making the right colour before it is put on the block, and in placing the colours side by side like a mosaic. The work is done somewhat in this way; the artist makes his drawing, several tracings (as many as there are colours) are made from it, and one extra tracing must be made of the outline only. Or rather the outline alone is cut on the block, other blocks are then made for each colour, or the parts cut out of the same block; one will contain all the red, another all the blue, a third the yellow, and so on. They must be very accurately cut, so as to fit together and print truly, and you can see from Japanese prints how wonderfully well the work is done. Of course the editions from such blocks are very limited, and on this account, like etchings, often vary, the printers having tried experiments in colour. The grain of the wood is taken advantage of in printing, as it often gives a lovely pattern; a good printer will wash in gradated skies with the backgrounds, and no matter how wonderfully they are worked, if of the same colour, are printed usually from the same block. The Japanese, I believe, use water-colours; certainly the French and English, who have tried to imitate them, do, putting the colour, mixed with a little size or gum, on the face of the block with a sponge; in fact they are printed water-colours. Several Frenchmen have obtained in this way most notable results. Very similar was the fashion of colour printing called chiaroscuro, used in the early part of the century. The trouble with this was that the oil with which the inks were mixed, either ran, or spoiled the pages, or did not dry well. Drawings on grey paper in chalk can be wonderfully imitated in this way, and there are methods of using steel and copper plates, bitten into relief to get outlines or tints, which were also employed. To-day in the printing of wood engravings and process blocks by steam, at many thousands an hour, the same system of colour printing, by placing the colours side by side, is being attempted, for it is impossible to obtain fine tone or rich effect by placing one colour on top of another, even in slow printing by hand, while it is absurd to attempt it rapidly by steam. In the most successful attempts yet made, those of the Le Quotidien Illustré and Le Rire, Paris papers, colour printing from process blocks has been most successfully done, and I do not doubt that in a very few years colour printing in magazines and newspapers will be very general.

As I have said, all intelligent printers have now come to the conclusion that simple flat colours, put on side by side, will alone give good artistic results; they have only learned this, however, after going quite to the other extreme: after trying to get pure colour and rich effects by using the three primary colours on top of each other, they obtained but crudeness, vulgarity, and mud.

Photography and chemistry are useful in art, but art cannot be created by these means. It may be that some one, some day, will be able to photograph a picture in colour, but there is as yet no evidence of it.

Wood engravings may also be made by scraping or lowering the fronts or backs of blocks, and rich, soft, fat effects can be produced. Very little has been done, I think, with these lowered blocks, some remarkable examples of which can be seen in Chatto and Jackson’s “History of Wood Engraving.”

Photography has aided the artist very much in wood engraving (though most engravers say it has not), and especially in colour printing it can be made great use of; as, instead of tracing a design on to several blocks, it can be photographed, thus ensuring accuracy—though the Japanese obtained this without any photographic aids—and saving much time.

Still, that is about as far as it goes at present, and photography will never supersede art, though it is engaged in a famous struggle with artlessness.