![]() | | ![]() |
William Blake's Techniques of
Engraving and Printing
by
G. E. Bentley, Jr.
[*]
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
![Click to Enlarge Page 242](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912668/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
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
![Click to Enlarge Page 243](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912669/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
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
![Click to Enlarge Page 244](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912670/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
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.
![Click to Enlarge Page 245](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912671/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
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]
![Click to Enlarge Page 246](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912672/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
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:
![Click to Enlarge Page 247](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912673/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
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
![Click to Enlarge Page 248](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912674/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
Blake's Printing Techniques
Blake's techniques of printing are rather better known, partly because they are more conventional, partly because they are more easily visible in his surviving works.
Blake bought a wooden press for printing engravings, perhaps with money he inherited when his father died in July 1784, and he probably used it in the print-selling business which he and his fellow-apprentice James Parker established beside Blake's birthplace at 27 Broad Street, Golden Square, London, in 1784-85. Certainly Blake had the press by 1800 when he moved to the little seaside village of Felpham in Sussex. He brought it back to London with him in September 1803,[17] and there were unsuccessful negotiations to sell it to J. Lahee in August 1827, just after Blake's death. We last hear of it when it was moved to John Linnell's house in Cirencester Place in 1827, when Catherine Blake moved there to be Linnell's housekeeper (Blake Records, 29, 350-351, 461 n. 1).
Blake was a master printer as well as engraver, and he took great care with his printing usually. Sometimes he masked the plate, so that only part of it would print, as in America pl. 4 and in many of the plates for the Small Book of Designs. Normally he wiped the border of the plate, and the presence or absence of this dark border is one of the ways of distinguishing between prints pulled by Blake and those made after his death by his disciple Frederick Tatham. He regularly printed in colours, brown, blue, green, red, orange, and yellow, as well as in black, and he invented a method, still little understood, of colour-printing in several colours at once. He apparently used this method of colour-printing chiefly or exclusively in 1795-96. Most of his works in Illuminated Printing he later coloured in water-colours, and this of course gave him the opportunity to improve the prints; sometimes he retraced the letters to clarify them, and sometimes he added features in the design, a bird, say, or a tree. Occasionally he added a border or extended the bottom of the design with a stream, particularly with the Songs.
At first, in 1790-1800, Blake apparently printed a stock of his own works which he kept on hand for customers. In his Prospectus "To the Public" of 10 October 1793 he announced:
![Click to Enlarge Page 249](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912675/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
unprofitable enough to me tho Expensive to the Buyer. . . .
The few I have Printed & Sold are sufficient to have gained me great reputation as an Artist which was the chief thing Intended But I have never been able to produce a Sufficient number for a general Sale by means of a regular Publisher[.] It is therefore necessary to me that any Person wishing to have any or all of them should send me their Order to Print them . . . & I will take care that they shall be done at least as well as any I have yet Produced[.]
The watermarks in his works in Illuminated Printing suggest that they were chiefly produced about 1790-1800, 1805, 1815, 1818-20, 1825-27.
However, many copies of his works were apparently not printed by Blake himself. His wife Catherine
did all the [domestic] Work herself, kept the House clean, & herself tidy, besides printing all Blake's numerous Engravings, which was a Task alone sufficient for any industrious Woman . . . .[18]
[Blake] allowed her, till the last moment of his practice, to take off his proof impressions and print his works, which she did most carefully, and ever delighted in the task . . . .[19]
Blake's methods of printing seem to have been meticulous but not unconventional. He told Cumberland his methods, probably about the time he was helping with the etchings for Cumberland's Thoughts on Outline (1796) and writing to him with directions for "laying on the Wax" on the copperplate (6 December 1795). Cumberland recorded in his Commonplace Book
Blakes Instructions to Print Copper Plates
Warm the Plate a little and then fill it with Ink by dabbing it all over two or three times.—Then wipe off the superfluous Ink, till the surface is clean—then with the palm of the hand beneath the little finger rubbed over with a little of the Ink & smoothed with whiting by rubbing it on a Ball of it. Wipe the surface of the Plate till it shines all over—then roll it through the Press with 3 blankets above the Plate, and pastboards beneath it next the Plank—Paper may be used instead of Pastboard.[20]
There are a number of clear indications that Blake and his wife not only pulled proofs of his works on their own press and printed the small numbers of his works in Illuminated Printings,[21] but that they did a certain amount
![Click to Enlarge Page 250](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912676/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
A more extensive labour was for Hayley's Designs to A Series of Ballads issued in parts in June, July, August, and September 1802 with three plates each designed and engraved by Blake, plus two others in the prefatory matter issued with the first part. William Hayley explained in a letter to Lady Hesketh of 10 June 1802 the progress of the first part:
The most profitable printing undertaking of the Blakes, so far as we know, was that of the plates of Hayley's Life . . . of William Cowper, Volumes I and II (1803). Blake told his brother James on 30 January 1803: "My Wife has undertaken to Print the whole number of the Plates for Cowpers work which she has done to admiration & being under my own eye the prints are as fine as the French prints & please every one." And he confirmed this
![Click to Enlarge Page 251](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912677/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
Blake's own relations with his patron Hayley were, however, deteriorating at this time, he and his wife were intermittently ill, and the London publisher, Joseph Johnson, must have found considerable difficulty in coordinating his London operations with a Chichester text-printer and his Felpham plate-printers. At any rate, the Blakes do not seem to have been employed to print the plates for Volume III of Cowper (1804), though Blake continued to pull his own proofs. He apologised to Hayley on 21 March 1804 for the delay in sending proof of the Cowper, because "I had not enough paper in proper order for printing; beg pardon . . .". The published version was clearly printed by a commercial copperplate printer, for on 1 April 1804 Hayley wrote: "Blake told me He had found an excellent Copperplate Printer not far from him . . . [to whom] He had confided his Work [of printing the Cowper plates.]"[26]
We have information as to who printed Blake's commercial engravings only when they were for books sponsored by his friends such as William Hayley, John Flaxman, and John Linnell. Probably he normally printed his own working-proofs of his commercial engravings, as he almost certainly did those for Flaxman's Hesiod. The earliest proofs, such as those in The British Museum Print Room, were, as he told Maria Denman on 18 March
![Click to Enlarge Page 252](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912678/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
In his last years, Blake probably printed little besides proofs of the plates he was then working on such as Job and Dante. On 19 February 1826 he told his new friend Crabb Robinson, evidently in a rather captious spirit:
At Blake's death in August 1827, his wife Catherine inherited all his small property, including his printing press and his hundreds of copperplates. These she moved to John Linnell's house in Cirencester Place, where
![Click to Enlarge Page 253](https://iiif.lib.virginia.edu/iiif/uva-lib:912679/full/!200,200/0/default.jpg)
William Blake was thus an enterprising and energetic innovator in engraving and in copper-plate printing. Here as elsewhere, however, his interest was in eternal beauty rather than in temporal profit: "My business is not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes expressing god-like sentiments".[28] He has gained from posterity what his contemporaries denied him. He deserves to be remembered for his technical inventiveness and expertise as well as for his grander creations in design, engraving, and poetry.
Notes
I am grateful to my friend Professor Robert Essick for invaluable advice about several technical features of Blake's printing. The essay on "The Printing of Blake's Illuminated Works", pp. xlvii-lii in William Blake's Writings (1979), Vol. I, is much narrower in scope and extent than the present essay.
Blake's Notebook p. 55; cf. p. 47. (William Blake's Writings [1979] is the source of all the Blake quotations here.)
Very detailed instructions about how "To engrave [on copper] with aquafortis, so that the work may appear like a basso relievo" are given in the first chapter of Anon., Valuable Secrets concerning Arts and Trades [1758], 1775, 1778, 1795, 1798, 1809, 1810. The book does not deal with printing from such plates.
"Hints on various Modes of Printing from Autographs", Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, 28 (Jan 1811), 56-59.
Probable exceptions are his plates for George Cumberland's Thoughts on Outline (1796), Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1797), William Hayley, An Essay on Sculpture (1800), Hayley, Little Tom the Sailor (1800), Hayley, Designs to A Series of Ballads (1802), Hayley, Life . . . of William Cowper (1803, 1804), Chaucer, Prologue (1812), Job (1826), and Dante (?1827). We must, therefore, be cautious about assuming that Blake lettered his commercial plates for books—see D. V. Erdman, "Dating Blake's Script: The 'g' hypothesis" and G. E. Bentley, Jr., "Blake Sinister 'g', from 1789-93 to ?1803", Blake Newsletter, III (1969), 8-13, 42-45.
It has been generally assumed that the "visionary imagination" occurred after Robert Blake's death in 1787, but this is not a necessary conclusion from Smith's language, and an earlier date, such as 1784, is at least possible.
Linnell wrote that this liquid "was nothing more I believe than the usual stopping as it is called used by engravers made chiefly of pitch and diluted with Terps" (Blake Records [1969], 460 n. 1).
Blake Records (1969), 472-473, quoted by Cunningham in his influential biography of 1830 (p. 504).
Virgin Wax is purified wax. (Cumberland called it "common white-wax"—see note 4 above.) The need for a perfect surface on the wax is indicated by Blake's directions "To Engrave on Pewter" quoted below.
British Museum Add. MSS 36, 497, f. 348v, quoted in a footnote to p. 4 of Blake's Notebook, ed. D. V. Erdman (1973). The rest of the quotation is irrelevant to Blake. I am grateful to D. V. Erdman, Allan Pritchard, and J. R. de J. Jackson for information about this memorandum.
Quoted from a photograph (generously sent me by its owner, Mr. Edward Croft-Murray) of the inscription in Cumberland's hand.
Lizar's account did not appear in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for June—October 1819, as Sir Geoffrey Keynes (Blake Studies [1971], 246) says it did. According to David Bindman, "There is no contemporary account of Blake's method of printing" (The Complete Graphic Works of William Blake, ed. D. Bindman [1978], 15), but, as may be seen below, this is not quite so.
In his letter of 13 Dec 1803 Blake apologises for not having sent Hayley a proof yet, "my Press not yet being put up". His apology to Cumberland in his letter of 4 Dec 1795 for not sending a proof, "my paper not being in order", seems to imply that he intended to pull the proof himself.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is the Blake work which survives in the largest number of copies; we can trace today some 25 copies printed by the Blakes between about 1794 and 1827, about one per year. Some of his works survive in only one copy (e.g., The Book of Los), and at least one work, his Prospectus "To the Public" (1793), does not survive in a contemporary copy at all.
No copy in colour, i.e., printed in brown, say, or blue, rather than black, is known to have survived. The ballad was intended to be sold to village folk for the benefit of the family of the brave sailor boy it celebrates, and the roughness of its printing was therefore not inappropriate to its audience. The printing was tricky, however, for there were four plates to be printed on one broadside leaf. There is no evidence that it was sold to London connoisseurs.
Blake Records (1969), 116-117. When the Designs to A Series of Ballads (1802) was reissued commercially in a new format in 1805, Blake was evidently involved not at all in the printing and only partially in the profits.
It was believed that Hayley had made £11,000 from editions of his Life . . . of William Cowper in 1803-4, 1806, 1809, 1812 (Alexander Stephens, Memoirs of John Horne Tooke [1813], II, 489 fn), and even allowing for gross exaggeration in the sum, and much larger printing-runs for later editions, it is fair to assume that the first printing was a large one.
![]() | | ![]() |