engraving

1 a print made from an engraving

2 a block or plate that has been engraved

3 making engraved or etched plates and printing designs from them [syn: etching]

English

Noun

1. the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it
2. an engraved image
3. (music) the art of drawing music notation at high quality, see Engraving

Related terms

• engrave
• whittle
• carve

Translations

• Czech: rytina

Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper, which are called engravings. Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper, both in artistic printmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. It has long been replaced by photography in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been largely replaced by etching and other techniques. Other terms often used for engravings are copper-plate engraving and Line engraving. These should all mean exactly the same, but especially in the past were often used very loosely to cover several printmaking techniques, so that many so-called engravings were in fact produced by totally different techniques, such as etching.

Process

Engravers use a hardened steel tool called a burin to cut the design into the surface, most traditionally a copper plate.http://expositions.bnf.fr/bosse/grand/214.htm Gravers come in a variety of shapes and sizes that yield different line types. The burin produces a unique and recognizable quality of line that is characterized by its steady, deliberate appearance and clean edges. The angle tint tool has a slightly curved tip that is commonly used in printmaking. Florentine liners are flat-bottomed tools with multiple lines incised into them, used to do fill work on larger areas. Flat gravers are used for doing fill work on letters, as well as most musical instrument engraving work. Round gravers are commonly used on silver to create bright cuts (also called bright-cut engraving), as well as other hard-to-cut metals such as nickel and steel. Burins are either square or elongated diamond-shaped and used for cutting straight lines. Other tools such as mezzotint rockers, roulets and burnishers are used for texturing effects.

History and usage

For the printing process, see printmaking. For the Western art history of engraving prints, see old master print and line engraving

In antiquity, the only engraving on metal that could be carried out is evident in the shallow grooves found in some jewellery after the beginning of the 1st Millennium B.C. The majority of so-called engraved designs on ancient gold rings or other items were produced by chasing or sometimes a combination of lost-wax casting and chasing.

However the use of engraving to cut decorative scenes or figures into glass vessels appears as early as the first century AD, continuing into the fourth century CE at urban centres such as Cologne and Rome, and appears to have ceased sometime in the fifth century. Decoration was first based on Greek mythology, before hunting and circus scenes became popular, as well as imagery drawn from the Old and New Testament. It appears to have been used to mimic the appearance of precious metal wares during the same period, including the application of gold leaf, and could be cut free-hand or with lathes. As many as twenty separate stylistic workshops have been identified, and it seems likely that the engraver and vessel producer were separate craftsmen.

In the European Middle Ages goldsmiths used engraving to decorate and inscribe metalwork. It is thought that they began to print impressions of their designs to record them. From this grew the engraving of copper printing plates to produce artistic images on paper, known as old master prints in Germany in the 1430s. Italy soon followed. Many early engravers came from a goldsmithing background. The first and greatest period of the engraving was from about 1470 to 1530, with such masters as Martin Schongauer , Albrecht Dürer , and Lucas van Leiden.

Thereafter engraving tended to lose ground to etching, which was a much easier technique for the artist to learn. But many prints combined the two techniques - although Rembrandt's prints are generally all called etchings for convenience, many of them have some burin or drypoint work, and some have nothing else. By the nineteenth century, most engraving was for commercial illustration.

Before the advent of photography, engraving was used to reproduce other forms of art, for example paintings. Engravings continued to be common in newspapers and many books into the early 20th century, as they were cheaper to use in printing than photographic images. Engraving has also always been used as a method of original artistic expression.

Modern process

Because of the high level of microscopic detail that can be achieved by a master engraver, counterfeiting of engraved designs is well-nigh impossible, and modern banknotes are almost always engraved, as are plates for printing money, checks, bonds and other security sensitive papers. The engraving is so fine that a normal printer can not recreate the detail of hand engraved images, nor can it be scanned. In the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, more than one hand engraver will work on the same plate, making it nearly impossible for one person to duplicate all the engraving on a particular banknote or document.

Many classic postage stamps were engraved, although the practice is now mostly confined to particular countries, or used when a more "elegant" design is desired and a limited color range is acceptable.

The modern discipline of hand engraving, as it is called in a metalworking context, survives largely in a few specialized fields. The highest levels of the art are found on firearms and other metal weaponry, jewelry and musical instruments. In most industrial uses like production of intaglio plates for commercial applications hand engraving has been replaced with milling using CNC engraving or milling machines.

Another application of modern engraving is found in the printing industry. There, every day thousands of pages are mechanically engraved onto rotogravure cylinders, typically a steel base with a copper layer of about 0.1 mm in which the image is transferred. After engraving the image is protected with an approximately 6 µm chrome layer. Using this process the image will survive for over a million copies in high speed printing presses.

Typically the image is created in some PDF like format and enters a work flow where it is processed and automatically imposed to the huge printing cylinders. Today up to 192 pages can be engraved on the same cylinder. Since the cylinder serves to print one color, four cylinders are typically used to print one side of the substrate. Rotogravure has a major share in publication, packaging and decorative printing.

Engraving machines such as the K500 (packaging) or K6 (publication) by Hell Gravure Systems use a diamond stylus to cut cells. Each cell creates one printing dot later in the process. A K6 can have up to 18 engraving heads each cutting 8.000 cells per second to an accuracy of .1 µm and below. They are of course fully computer controlled and the whole process of cylinder making is fully automated.

The engraving process with diamonds is state of the art since the 1960s.

Today laser engraving machines are in development but as per today still the mechanical cutting has proven its strength in economical terms and quality. More than 4,000 engravers make approx. 8 Mio printing cylinders worldwide per year.

Biblical references

Prints (see also List of Printmakers):

• Jacopo de' Barbari active 1500-1515
• William Blake (1757 - 1827)
• Giulio Campagnola active c1505-15
• Albrecht Dürer (1471 – 1528)
• Master ES active c1450-70
• Maso Finiguerra (1426-1464)
• Theodore de Bry (1528 - 1598)
• Hendrick Goltzius (c.1558-1617)
• William Hogarth (1697 – 1764)
• Lucas van Leyden
• Andrea Mantegna
• Claude Mellan (1598-1688)
• Israhel van Meckenem d.1501
• Matthäus Merian (1593 - 1650)
• Paul Revere
• Jan Saenredam (1565-1607)
• Bertil Schmüll
• Martin Schöngauer (c.1450-1491)
• Czesław Słania
• Maerten de Vos (1532-1603)
• Anthonie Wierix (1552-1624)
• Hieronymus Wierix (1553-1619)
• Hristofor Zhefarovich (unknown-1753)
• Gustave Doré (1832 – 1883)
• Thomas Oldham Barlow (1824 - 1889)

Of gems:

• Theodorus of Samos,Polycrates' gem-engraver
• Pyrgoteles ,Alexander's gem-engraver

Of guns:

• A. B. Bradshaw (Firearm Engraver)
• Thierry Duguet
• Geoffroy Gournet
• Ken Hunt (engraver)
• Harry Kell
• Harry Morris (sometimes Henry Morris)
• Jack Sumner
• Sam Alfano

See also

• Toreutics
• Laser engraving
• Drypoint
• Music engraving
• Photogravure
• Photoengraving
• Laser Engraving Jewelry
• Firearm Engraving
• Printmaking
• Relief engraving
• Resingrave
• Steel engraving
• Chalcography
• Sugar lift
• Line engraving
• Wood engraving
• Etching

Notes

References

• A. M. Hind (1923, repr. 1963). History of Engraving and Etching. Dover.
• A. Gross (1970). Etching, Engraving, and Intaglio Printing.
• G. Duplessis (1989). Wonders of Engraving.

External links

• Engraving from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History
• Links to thousands of museum online images of engravings from Bodkin Prints
• Blog on Old Master Engravings and Etchings
• Japanese traditional hand engravings on blades

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