The drawings are made on thin paper and stuck downwards on the blocks; then the knife is carefully run along the edges of the various lines, cutting outwards, the interlinear spaces being cut away with a gouge and hammer. The wood cutting was often done by women. The method of work is probably the same as was used in Europe in the case of early blocks.
Besides the design block, always printed in dark neutral tint or black, during the eighteenth and succeeding centuries, the Chinese and Japanese cut accessory blocks which were inked in various colours. The registering of the various colour blocks was managed either by pegs or notches, and the colours were mixed with water or rice paste. Most of the European colour processes of printing require oil colours, but water colours on the Japanese principle have been used with admirable effect in some of the illustrations to Henry Shaw’s books on Mediæval Dresses and Decorative Arts, and notably by Edmund Evans and his successors in more recent times.
From the earliest illustration, mentioned above, until the present day, the style of Chinese and Japanese wood illustrations has not altered. There have been several engravers of great skill in both countries, but I think the Japanese colour prints are best known to us.
The blocks are frequently signed with the names of the designers, particularly in later times, and many names are already well known to collectors.
In the seventeenth century Korin was one of the best of the Japanese illustrators; in the eighteenth century there is admirable work signed by Hokusai and Hiroshige, and among the many skilled designers of the nineteenth century the work of Kitigawa Utamaro is perhaps the best known.
Page from the “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.” (Venice, 1499.) [To face p. 104.
The first Italian book in which wood engravings were used is, as far as is now known, the “Meditations” of Turrecremata, printed at Rome in 1467, by Ulrich Hahn. The illustrations are of a simple character in outline. Then came instances in books printed at Naples, Rome, Verona, and especially at Venice, where Erhard Ratdolt produced several with beautiful initials, borders, and pictures. Numbers of the books published at Venice in the later part of the fifteenth century are illustrated with exquisite wood cuts; among them the most celebrated and the most beautiful is the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed in 1499.
This celebrated book was written by Francesco Colonna, whose name is curiously shown by the initials of the chapters, which read “Poliam Frater Franciscus Columna peramavit,” “Brother Franciscus Columna loved Polia very much.” Polia has been presumably identified with Lucretia Lelio, who was a native of Treviso, the place of Polifilo’s dream. The many engravings are in outline, and several of them are full page.