BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES
By J. H. MASON
THE Studio special number, "Modern Woodcuts and Lithographs, by British and French Artists," with Commentary by M. C. Salaman, is the first collection, with any claim to comprehensiveness, of the artistic work of the present renaissance of the woodcut. The woodcut has a twofold employment: it may be used for pictorial broadsides or for book illustration. It concerns us here as a means—I wonder if I ought not to write the means?—of book illustration. Notwithstanding the great technical advances made in line and half-tone photo-process engraving, there is a tendency to return to the use of the woodcut for certain kinds of catalogue illustrations, and, to a still greater extent, for book illustration and decoration.
The half-tone process involves the use of so-called "art" paper, i.e., a wood pulp or grass pulp paper as a centre, coated over with kaolin or china clay, with a high finish, the glazed polish of which reflects the light very unpleasantly. This objectionable paper, apart from the incongruity of wash drawings or photographs with typography, relegates this method of book illustration to utilitarian ends. The line process is far preferable for book illustration, but in itself it has no pleasant quality, usually very much the reverse, and pen drawings are no more directly suitable for book illustration than pen lettering is for use with type. The woodcut modifies the character of the drawing with a discipline which produces a character more in sympathy with that which type has acquired at the hands of the punch-cutter and type-founder in its passage from writing; and the same discipline modifies the artist's vision as well as the drawing. Material, too, has its own character, and when the user is not too clever this character becomes active in the work, not merely passive. The wood block itself can contribute a valuable quality, and either the knife or the graver is a responsive tool. The corresponding elements in line process work are the zinc plate and etching acid, and they do contribute something of their quality to the work; but it is not an attractive quality.
The rediscovered qualities of the wood block have attracted many artists to its use. They are producing work of great variety of interest, but it is rather in the pictorial direction than as book illustration. The work of Valloton elsewhere, and of Jane Bouquet and Brangwyn, of Sydney Lee and Verpilleux in this Studio special number are examples of this. The work of Lucien Pissaro, of Charles Shannon, and Charles Ricketts shows the right use of the woodcut as decorative illustration, but their work belongs to the early days of this revival. Dürer, Holbein, and the Polyphilus printed by Aldus are the great exemplars for a pre-Bewick Brotherhood of the decorative woodcut. Where work of a freer quality is desirable, Miss Jackson's on page 13 shows the texture that goes with type satisfactorily. Miss Gribble has given the right degree of formal treatment to the pastoral motives she has chosen for tail-pieces, and makes them decorative without letting them lose their interest and so become vapid conventions. Both Miss Jackson and Miss Gribble are pupils of Mr. Noel Rooke, who has done so much for the right use of the woodcut for decorative illustration.
The lithographs suffer much more than the woodcuts by reproduction. To begin with, they are very much reduced in size, and they are printed by a letterpress method (i.e., from a relief surface) instead of from the plain surface for which they were drawn. The loss which they suffer by these changes can only be appreciated by those who know the originals. Both Mr. and Mrs. Hartrick's fine examples suffer through the loss of the rich lithographic black.