EXAMPLE OF GENUINE CHAP-BOOK, WOOD CUT ILLUSTRATION. From an article on “Art Among the Ballad-Mongers,” by Llewellynn Jewett, F. S. A., in the London Art Journal.
It is then easily turned from side to side on the leather pad. When a curved line is to be engraved it is not the graver alone which moves, but the block also is directed with the left hand, so as to assist matters. {228}
The first process in engraving a line is to take a fine tool (called a tint-tool as distinguished from the blunter tool called a graver) and outline the line. In the Schafhausen cut, the white line around the man’s legs gives a good idea of the proper character of such an outlining line, except that the line should be thinner, more uniform, and more like the lower part of the outline of the sword and the outline of the left side of the staff of the standard. The wood is cut away from both sides of a black line; and then with a gouge of any convenient size the wood is further cleared away. In this way the genuine Chap-Book cut was produced. The white line of the “Standard-Bearer” of Schafhausen can easily be combined with tint lines. Tint lines may be seen in the Chap-Book imitation. It is advisable to draw simple or rough subjects at first; and to draw your outlines heavier at first than you intend them finally to be, since in cutting away you are apt to reduce them by a slip of the tool or by a little more pressure in one place than in another, and then it is necessary to go around the line again to reduce it to uniform regularity. It is better to draw a face like the one in the Crawhall than like the genuine Chap-Book example, for in following the lines of the latter a slip of the burin might entirely destroy an eyebrow or the bridge of the nose; but in the Crawhall any of the lines might be reduced to a somewhat narrower one without interfering with the general effect. The beginner is advised to confine himself to initial letters and tailpieces and not to attempt ambitious subjects. He is also especially advised not to plan out, on the day he receives his tools, a cut for a job wanted immediately, for he will surely have to keep that order waiting a week {229}
IMITATION OF CHAP-BOOK ILLUSTRATION. Cut directly on the wood, without any copy, by Joseph Crawhall.
{230} or two. A pound of boxwood in four or six irregular pieces from one inch to three inches long and one to two inches wide, if not squared off, may be obtained for about 25 cents from a boxwood supply house. The printer may square these scraps with a miter box and saw, and he can proportion his designs to the size of the scraps. Thus, illustrations and devices may be got up for a mere song. Larger blocks of boxwood may be ordered at 3 or 4 cents a square inch, which is nearly the cost of photo-engraving; and as it takes longer to engrave than to draw in pen-and-ink, wood engraving is not recommended for general illustration. But as photo-engravers usually have a minimum price of from 75 cents to $1 for each cut, it is cheaper to cut initial letters and tailpieces on scraps than to have them photo-engraved. For instance, twenty photo-engraved tailpieces might cost you from $15 to $20, but they might not cost you $2 if boxwood scraps were used.
In previous illustrations, such as the head of Göthe’s mother, the Grasset typographical ornaments, the Vallotton, Auriol and Hassall examples, we gave suggestions for exercises in wood engraving. The benefit derived from the practice of wood engraving is not limited to preparing new cuts alone. No printer who uses illustrations should be without a wood engraving outfit, consisting of four to six tools, and the cunning to use it. There are many cases in which a process plate, or a chalk plate, or old wood type, can be cleaned up, altered or improved with a little handwork. Sometimes in a zinc plate the fine lines in a sky print clearly on a small run, but soon begin to round and flatten; if not essential to the design they may then be entirely cut out {231} and the run continued. In chalk plate, surfaces may be cast black and then cut into with a white line, as in the Schafhausen. And wood type which is too old to print a solid black evenly, may be punched with an awl, as in the background of the Larousse Dictionary A, to reduce it to a stipple gray; or white-lined like the following portrait; or the sides may be trimmed with the graver. Rouletting can be imitated with a
WOOD CUT PORTRAIT. From a French periodical, showing open white lines used to represent a tint.
common graver by cutting across the line at regular intervals. Only when a series of lines has to be rouletted is it necessary to have a special instrument, which costs from $1.50 to $3. New processes are being developed every day whereby printers can make more or less effective, if crude, cuts with little expense; but they are rarely perfect mechanically, and a little handwork will improve their results a hundred per cent.