Wood-Block Printing Part 1

Wood-Block Printing.

by F. Morley Fletcher.

EDITOR'S PREFACE

In issuing these volumes of a series of Handbooks on the Artistic Crafts, it will be well to state what are our general aims.

In the first place, we wish to provide trustworthy text-books of workshop practice, from the points of view of experts who have critically examined the methods current in the shops, and putting aside vain survivals, are prepared to say what is good workmans.h.i.+p, and to set up a standard of quality in the crafts which are more especially a.s.sociated with design. Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design itself as an essential part of good workmans.h.i.+p. During the last century most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an academic kind, were little considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as a mere matter of _appearance_. Such "ornamentation" as there was was usually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided by an artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved in production. With the critical attention given to the crafts by Ruskin and Morris, it came to be seen that it was impossible to detach design from craft in this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design is an inseparable element of good quality, involving as it does the selection of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert workmans.h.i.+p, proper finish, and so on, far more than mere ornament, and indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine workmans.h.i.+p than a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmans.h.i.+p when separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought--that is, from design--inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation, divorced from workmans.h.i.+p, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls into affectation. Proper ornamentation may be defined as a language addressed to the eye; it is pleasant thought expressed in the speech of the tool.

In the third place, we would have this series put artistic craftsmans.h.i.+p before people as furnis.h.i.+ng reasonable occupations for those who would gain a livelihood. Although within the bounds of academic art, the compet.i.tion, of its kind, is so acute that only a very few per cent. can fairly hope to succeed as painters and sculptors; yet, as artistic craftsmen, there is every probability that nearly every one who would pa.s.s through a sufficient period of apprentices.h.i.+p to workmans.h.i.+p and design would reach a measure of success.

In the blending of hand-work and thought in such arts as we propose to deal with, happy careers may be found as far removed from the dreary routine of hack labour as from the terrible uncertainty of academic art.

It is desirable in every way that men of good education should be brought back into the productive crafts: there are more than enough of us "in the city," and it is probable that more consideration will be given in this century than in the last to Design and Workmans.h.i.+p.

There are two common ways of studying old and foreign arts--the way of the connoisseur and the way of the craftsman. The collector may value such arts for their strangeness and scarcity, while the artist finds in them stimulus in his own work and hints for new developments.

The following account of colour-printing from wood-blocks is based on a study of the methods which were lately only practised in j.a.pan, but which at an earlier time were to some degree in use in Europe also. The main principles of the art, indeed, were well known in the West long before colour prints were produced in j.a.pan, and there is some reason to suppose that the j.a.panese may have founded their methods in imitating the prints taken from Europe by missionaries. Major Strange says: "The European art of _chiaroscuro_ engraving is in all essentials identical with that of j.a.panese colour-printing.... It seems, therefore, not vain to point out that the accidental sight of one of the Italian colour-prints may have suggested the process to the j.a.panese." The Italians aimed more at expressing "relief" and the j.a.panese at flat colour arrangements; the former used oily colours, and the latter fair distemper tints; these are the chief differences. Both in the West and the East the design was cut on the plank surface of the wood with a knife; not across the grain with a graver, as is done in most modern wood engraving, although large plank woodcuts were produced by Walter Crane and Herkomer, about thirty years ago, as posters.

The old woodcuts of the fifteenth century were produced as pictures as well as for the ill.u.s.tration of books; frequently they were of considerable size. Often, too, they were coloured by stencil plates or freely by hand.

At the same time the printing in colour of letters and other simple devices in books from wood-blocks was done, and a book printed at St.

Albans in 1486 has many coats of arms printed in this way; some of the s.h.i.+elds having two or three different colours.[1]

About the year 1500 a method of printing woodcuts in several flat tones was invented in Germany and practised by Lucas Cranach and others. A fine print of Adam and Eve by Hans Baldung in the Victoria and Albert Museum has, besides the bold black "drawing," an over-tint printed in warm brown out of which sharp high lights are cut; the print is thus in three tones.

[1] See R. M. Burch, _Colour Printing_, 1900.

Ugo da Carpo (_c._ 1480-1530) working in Venice, introduced this new type of tone woodcut into Italy; indeed, he claimed to be the inventor of the method. "This was called _chiaroscuro_, a name still given to it, and was, in fact, a simple form of our modern chromo printing." His woodcuts are in a simple, vigorous style; one of them after Raphael's "Death of Ananias," printed in brown, has a depth and brilliancy which may remind us of the mezzo-tints of Turner's _Liber Studiorum_. This is proudly signed, "Per Ugo da Carpo," and some copies are said to be dated 1518.

Andrea Andreani (_c._ 1560-1623), a better known but not a better artist, produced a great number of these tone woodcuts. Several prints after Mantegna's "Triumphs of Caesar" have a special charm from the beauty of the originals; they are printed in three tints of grey besides the "drawing"; the palest of these tints covers the surface, except for high lights cut out of it. A fine print of a Holy Family, about 1518 inches, has a middle tone of fair blue and a shadow tint of full rich green. Copies of two immense woodcuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, of Biblical subjects, seem to have been seems to cramp the hand and injure the eyes of all but the most gifted draughtsmen. It is desirable to cultivate the ability to seize and record the "map-form" of any object rapidly and correctly. Some practice in elementary colour-printing would certainly be of general usefulness, and simpler exercises may be contrived by cutting out with scissors and laying down shapes in black or coloured papers unaided by any pattern.

Finally, the hope may be expressed that the beautiful art of wood-cutting as developed in Western Europe and brought to such perfection only a generation ago is only temporarily in abeyance, and that it too may have another day.

W. R. LETHABY.

_September 1916._

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This little book gives an account of one of the primitive crafts, in the practice of which only the simplest tools and materials are used. Their method of use may serve as a means of expression for artist-craftsmen, or may be studied in preparation for, or as a guide towards, more elaborate work in printing, of which the main principles may be seen most clearly in their application in the primitive craft.

In these days the need for reference to primitive handicrafts has not ceased with the advent of the machine. The best achievements of hand-work will always be the standards for reference; and on their study must machine craft be based. The machine can only increase the power and scale of the crafts that have already been perfected by hand-work.

Their principles, and the art of their design, do not alter under the machine. If the machine disregards these its work becomes base. And it is under the simple conditions of a handicraft that the principles of an art can be most clearly experienced.

The best of all the wonderful and excellent work that is produced to-day by machinery is that which bears evidence in itself of its derivation from arts under the pure conditions of cla.s.sic craftsmans.h.i.+p, and shows the influence of their study.

The series of which this book is a part stands for the principles and the spirit of the cla.s.sic examples. To be a.s.sociated with those fellow-craftsmen who have been privileged to work for the Series is itself an honour of high estimation in the mind of the present writer.

If the book contributes even a little toward the usefulness of the series the experiments which are recorded here will have been well worth while.

To my friend Mr. J. D. Batten is due all the credit of the initial work.

He began the search for a pure style of colour-printing, and most generously supported and encouraged my own experiments in the j.a.panese method.

To my old colleague Mr. A. W. Seaby I would also express my indebtedness for his kind help and advice.

F. M. F.

EDINBURGH COLLEGE OF ART, _September 1916._

CHAPTER I

_INTRODUCTORY_

Introduction and Description of the Origins of Wood-block Printing; its uses for personal artistic expression, for reproduction of decorative designs, and as a fundamental training for students of printed decoration.

The few wood-block prints shown from time to time by the Society of Graver Printers in Colour, and the occasional appearance of a wood-block print in the Graver Section of the International Society's Exhibitions, or in those of the Society of Arts and Crafts, are the outcome of the experiments of a small group of English artists in making prints by the j.a.panese method, or by methods based on the j.a.panese practice.

My interest was first drawn in 1897 to experiments that were being made by Mr. J. D. Batten, who for two years previously had attempted, and partially succeeded in making, a print from wood and metal blocks with colour mixed with glycerine and dextrine, the glycerine being afterwards removed by was.h.i.+ng the prints in alcohol. As the j.a.panese method seemed to promise greater advantages and simplicity, we began experiments together, using as our text-book the pamphlet by T. Tokuno, published by the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, Was.h.i.+ngton, and the dextrine and glycerine method was soon abandoned. The edition of prints, however, of Eve and the Serpent designed by J. D. Batten, printed by myself and published at that time, was produced partly by the earlier method and partly in the simpler j.a.panese way.

Familiar as everyone is with j.a.panese prints, it is not generally known that they are produced by means of an extremely simple craft. No machinery is required, but only a few tools for cutting the designs on the surface of the planks of cherry wood from which the impressions are taken. No press is used, but a round flat pad, which is rubbed on the back of the print as it lies on the blocks. The colours are mixed with water and paste made from rice flour. The details of the craft and photographs of the tools were given in full in the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution pamphlet already mentioned.

It is slow and unsatisfactory work, however, learning manipulation from a book, and several technical difficulties that seemed insurmountable were made clear by the chance discovery in London of a j.a.panese printseller who, although not a printer, was sufficiently familiar with the work to give some invaluable hints and demonstrations.

Further encouragement was given to the work by the inst.i.tution, a little later, of a cla.s.s in wood-cuts in colour under my charge, at the L.C.C.

Central School of Arts and Crafts, which for several years became the chief centre of the movement.

Such are the bare historical facts of the development in our country of this craft imported from the Far East.

On a merely superficial acquaintance the j.a.panese craft of block-printing may appear to be no more than a primitive though delicate form of colour reproduction, which modern mechanical methods have long superseded, even in the land of its invention; and that to study so limited a mode of expression would be hardly of any practical value to an artist. Moreover, the craft is under the disadvantage that all the stages of the work, from making the first design to taking the final impressions, must be done by the artist himself--work which includes the delicate cutting of line and planning of colour blocks, and the preparation of colour and paper. In j.a.pan there were trained craftsmen expert in each of these branches of the craft, and each carried out his part under the supervision of the artist. No part but the design was done by him. So that the very character of the work has an essential difference. Under our present conditions the artist must undertake the whole craft, with all its detail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate II.--Key-block of the print shown on the frontispiece.

(The portion of wood lying outside the points of the ma.s.s of foliage is left standing to support the paper, but is not inked in printing.)

(_To face page 5._)]

Simple as the process is, there is, from first to last, a long labour involved in planning, cutting and printing, before a satisfactory batch of prints is produced. After several attempts in delegating printing to well-trained pupils I have found it impossible to obtain the best results by that means, but the cutting of the colour-blocks and the clearing of the key-block after the first cutting of the line may well be done by a.s.sistant craftsmen.