| ||
William Blake was apprenticed as an engraver on 4 August 1772 and served a seven year term under James Basire, one of the most successful engravers of the time. Basire's speciality was reproducing drawings of architecture and sculpture in works such as Stuart & Revett's Antiquities of Athens Measured and Delineated (1762-1816), [Richard Gough's] Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (1786, 1796), and Jacob Bryant's Analysis
Blake had mastered the various standard reproductive techniques of his time, in line-engraving (e.g., Job [1826]), stipple (Flaxman's Hesiod [1817]), etching (the first state of the plate after Hogarth for Gay's Beggar's Opera [1790]), and wood engraving (Virgil [1821]), and, had his character been different, he might well have been President of the Chalcographical Society, as was his sometime fellow apprentice and partner James Parker. He also experimented vigorously with the new techniques such as lithography, which was introduced into England about 1803—his "Enoch" lithograph was probably made about 1807—and he adapted and invented a number of techniques for his own purposes. Blake would have been remembered as a chalcographical innovator, even had he not been a great engraver, designer, colourist—and poet. The purpose of what follows is primarily to lay forth the contemporary verbal evidence about Blake's engraving and copperplate-printing techniques.
Not long after he was out of his apprenticeship indentures in 1779, Blake began experimenting with reproductive techniques. The subject was much in the air at the time: in France and England Franz Ignaz Joseph Hoffman and Alexander Tilloch were making experiments, and Blake's friend George Cumberland wrote excitedly to his brother about his discoveries and published them as his "New Mode of Engraving", New Review, IV (Nov 1784), summarized in the European Magazine (1784). Cumberland's discovery was that the relatively simple technique of etching designs could be adapted by amateurs to etching texts; the chief drawback, a relatively minor one Cumberland thought, was that the text would ordinarily be printed backwards and could be read easily only with a mirror. In Cumberland's technique, it was the dark lines which were etched and printed. Blake's technique of Illuminated Printing was a very considerable extension of Cumberland's and was probably made about the same time, for his Island in the Moon (?1784) evidently once had a passage describing a method of "Illuminating the [Engraved] Manuscript".
Blake's method of Illuminated Printing differed in at least three important respects from Cumberland's: 1) The writing on the copper was put on
Presumably all engravers were trained in mirror-writing, but few did so well or often. Note that the art of writing backwards on copper was a separate sub-division of the engraver's craft and that there were Writing Engravers such as William Staden Blake (fl. 1770-1817) who specialized in it. Frequently, probably normally, the design-engraver would turn his finished plate over to the publisher, who would then commission a Writing Engraver to add the lettering, including the title and the crucial imprint with the day of publication, e.g., "Published as the Act directs by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1 Jan. 1817". Blake, for instance, brought in his plates after Flaxman's Hesiod designs to Longman beginning in 1814, but it was not until 21 June 1816 that they paid £4.18 to "Jeffreys [for adding] Writing to 14 plate &c.mmat; 7/.—" (Blake Records, 579).
However, Blake not only lettered all his own separate plates and works in Illuminated Printing, but he sometimes lettered his commercial plates for other men's books. For example, he wrote to Hayley on 16 March 1804 about his plate for the third volume of Hayley's Life . . . of William Cowper: "The inscriptions to the Plates I must beg of you to send to me that I may Engrave them immediately". This may, however, have been an exceptional case, because of Blake's friendship with Hayley. It seems likely that the inscriptions
The invention of Blake's method of Illuminated Printing was thus described by Blake's acquaintance of 1784, J. T. Smith:
Blake described his own techniques of engraving and printing a number of times, mostly for his friend the dilletante artist and inventor George Cumberland.
As to laying on the Wax [on the copper for etching] it is as follows
Take a cake of Virgins Wax (I dont know What animal produces it)[10] & stroke it regularly over the surface of a warm Plate (the Plate must be warm enough to melt the Wax as it passes over), then immediately draw a feather over it & you will get an even surface which when cold will receive any impression minutely[.]
Cumberland was profoundly grateful for the assistance, and in the Thoughts on Outline he wrote:
Blake made a memorandum in his Notebook (p. 4), perhaps at this time, about etching or engraving on relatively soft and cheap pewter (rather than copper), the technique being a standard one of transferring a pencil drawing, reversed, to the wax-covered plate; about white-line engraving on pewter; and about white-line etching on copper:
Memorandum
To Engrave on Pewter. Let there be first a drawing made correctly with black lead pencil. Let nothing be to seek, then rub it off on the plate covered with white wax [as in the 1795 letter to Cumberland] or perhaps pass it thro press. This will produce certain & determind forms on the plate & time will not be wasted in seeking them afterwards.
Memorandum
To Woodcut on Pewter. Lay a ground on the Plate & smoke it as for Etching. Then trace your outlines [& draw them in with a needle del], and beginning with the spots of light on each object with an oval pointed needle scrape off the ground [& instead of etching the shadowy strokes del] as a direction for your graver then proceed to graving with the ground on the plate being as careful as possible not to hurt the ground because it being black will shew perfectly what is wanted [towards del]
Memorandum
To Woodcut on Copper. Lay a ground as for Etching. Trace &c & instead of Etching the blacks Etch the whites & bite it in[.]
Blake evidently told George Cumberland about this method of woodcutting on metal, for on the back of a letter of James Irvine of 16 December 1794 Cumberland made a memorandum about "Blakes method, biting whites".[11]
Cumberland continued to be interested in Blake's methods of engraving. He evidently acquired one of the very few copies of Blake's lithograph of "Enoch" (?1807), and on the back of it he wrote down
White Lyas—is the Block[;] draw with Ink composed of Asphaltum dissolved in dry Linseed Oil—add fine venetian Tripoli & Rotten Stone Powder. Let it dry. When dry saturate the stone with water and Dab it with the broad Dabber, and cover it very thinly with best Printers Ink—and Print as a block—
of Blake.[12]
Blake seems actually to have recorded in print some of his inventions, though these may have now been lost. In his notebooks for 1804-8, Cumberland repeatedly made notes to himself:
Blake's inventions in engraving and printing are not known to have been published in 1809 or later, and Cumberland consequently noted eagerly other inventions which were like Blake's. On 22 January 1819 he wrote to his son:
- 1) Anon., "Art. V—Account of a new Style of Engraving on Copper in Alto Relievo, invented by W[illiam Home] Lizars. Drawn up from information communicated by the Inventor", Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, II (April 1820), 19-23, in which Lizars says he "was much indebted" "during these experiments" to "Mr Sivright of Meggetland" (a suburb of Edinburgh), but he does not mention "Copper Blocks";
- 2) The reprint of the bulk of Lizar's account in The Gentlemen's Magazine, XCI (1821), 625-6, citing "Edinburgh Philosophical Journal";
- 3) Anon., "A New Style of Engraving, invented by Mr. Lizars", London Journal of Arts and Science, I (1820), 78-79, which does not refer to "Copper Blocks", Sivewright, or The Edinburgh Philosophical Journal; and
- 4) Charles Pye, "Mr. Pye on Engraving on Metal and Stone. On a new Process of Engraving on Metal and Stone", London Journal of Arts and Sciences, I (1820), 55-58, which describes Pye's own experiments made "five years" earlier than the "account of the Process of Engraving on Copper Blocks into alto relievo by Mr. Lizars" "in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal", but which does not mention Mr Sivewright.
There is a further, chronological, difficulty, for all four of the articles were published in 1820 and 1821.[16] Without yet another date, after January
| ||