Original Prints

Linocut prints first appeared in the twentieth century with artists finding the newly invented linoleum an easier material to carve than wood and much cheaper to buy than the metal plates required for etching.

Engraving has been used as a way of decorating objects – metal, glass and precious stones – for many centuries. In the fifteenth century in Germany engraved plates began to be used as a way of creating multiple versions of a printed image. A burin is the tool used to make the marks on the plate. This is a small steel rod with a sharp point and a handle. The handle is held firmly in the palm of the hand and the point is pushed at an angle across the plate removing a sliver of metal. Any rough edges raised are smoothed away. There are few artists creating original engravings these days as other techniques have become easier and more accessible.

Dry point also involves the use of a sharp instrument to incise the metal but differs from etching in pushing excess metal to the side of the furrow rather than gouging it out. This metal is known as the burr which is the characteristic feature of a dry point print. As well as going in the groove the ink is also retained in the burr giving the edges of the printed line a soft blurred appearance.

Etching uses acid rather than tools to mark the surface of the plate. Firstly an acid resistant substance called the ground is used to cover the plate. A needle or stylus is then used to remove small amounts of the ground with each mark. Removing the ground requires a lot less effort and time than engraving metal and the ground can be reapplied if a mistake is made. The creation of the design is more like drawing than engraving making it easy for artists to reproduce their own images multiple times. When the design is complete the plate is immersed in a container of acid which bites into the exposed areas leaving a groove. The plate is removed from the acid and the ground cleaned off. The plate is then ready for inking and printing as with an engraved plate.

Mezzotint is a form of intaglio printing that was invented in the 17^th century. It was enhanced and disseminated by Charles I’s nephew Prince Rupert. He invented a tool called a rocker with multiple small teeth that if ‘rocked’ over the surface of the plate in all directions gradually built up a surface covered in tiny dots. The more times the rocker moves across the surface the finer the haze of dots and the darker the prints. Scrapers and burnishing tools are used to create the design on the incised metal creating lighter areas which hold less or no ink during the printing process. This allows for a subtle variation and gradation of tone that approaches that achieved by drawing and painting.

Collagraphy involves sticking different substances on to a board to create a variety of textures which when inked produce prints of endless variety. The word comes from the same stem ‘colla-’ meaning glue as in ‘collage’. The surface may be raised using glue, textiles, carborandum, sticky tape, plaster, animal or vegetable matter (eg feathers and leaves) and textured paper such as embossed wallpaper. The surface of the board may be incised to create dark areas of ink. This therefore is a technique that may combine relief and intaglio elements in the same print.

Screen printing (also called silkscreen or serigraph) was originally developed as a technique for printing designs onto fabric using a template stencil. First used in China around 900 AD the technique was adapted in Japan to use human hair instead of silk. Dyes or paint would be pushed through the mesh using a firm brush with parts of the field blocked out to create the design. An extension of this method in the early 20^th Century used silk and then synthetic materials for the mesh and a rubber squeegee (abit like a windscreen wiper). The squeegee pushes the ink through the mesh whilst wiping away any ink that the remains above it. These days most stencils are produced photographically using a UV light sensitive emulsion. The emulsion covers the mesh on a frame. An acetate image of the design – the ‘positive’-  is put under the mesh and then the mesh is exposed to UV light. This fixes and hardens the emulsion except where the light is blocked by the design. In these areas the still soft emulsion can be washed away creating the stencil of the design.  A print with multiple colours is built up using a series of meshes prepared and inked separately which superimpose the image.

Lithography (‘litho’- Stone) was invented in 1798 in Munich by Alois Senefelder using limestone blocks from the Solnhofen region in Bavaria. This very smooth limestone is used as a drawing surface. The design is marked onto the stone using a greasy crayon or a crayon based ink wash called tusche. The image is fixed on the surface of the stone using a combination of gum arabic and nitric acid. The design is then washed off leaving a ghost like image on the surface of the stone. There remains sufficient grease from the design material within the stone that when an inked roller is passed over the wetted stone only the greasy areas attract the ink whilst the rest of the wet stone repels it. Paper is then laid on top of the stone and the press passed over it to create the print. Multiple colours are obtained from using two or more stones – one for each colour.