FROM “GRIMM’S HOUSEHOLD STORIES.” (WALTER CRANE.)
CHAPTER V.
WOOD ENGRAVINGS.
O turn to a more practical side of book illustration. The first principle of illustration is to illustrate, and yet it is a fact that few illustrations in books or magazines are to be found in their proper places in the text.
It is seldom that the illustration (so called) is in artistic harmony with the rest of the page, as it is found in old books. One of the great charms of Bewick’s work is its individuality and expressive character. Here the artist and engraver were one, and a system of illustration was founded in England a hundred years ago which we should do well not to forget.[21]
We are fast losing sight of first principles and aiming rather at catching the eye and the public purse with a pretty page; and in doing this we are but imitators. In the English magazines it is strange to find a slavish, almost childish imitation of the American system of illustration; adopting, for instance, the plan of pictures turned over at the corners or overlapping each other with exaggerated black borders and other devices of the album of the last generation. This is what we have come to in England in 1894 (with excellent wood engravers still), and the kind of art by which we shall be remembered at the end of the nineteenth century! I am speaking of magazines like Good Words and Cassell’s Magazine, where wood engraving is still largely employed.
It may be as well to explain here that the reasons for employing the medium of wood engraving for elaborate illustrations which, such as we see in American magazines, were formerly only engraved on copper or steel, are—(1) rapidity of production, and (2) the almost illimitable number of copies that can be produced from casts from wood blocks. The broad distinction between the old and new methods of wood engraving is, that in early days the lines were drawn clearly on the wood block and the part not drawn cut away by the engraver, who endeavoured to make a perfect fac-simile of the artist’s lines. It is now a common custom to transfer a photograph from life on to the wood block (see p. 167), also to draw on the wood with a brush in tint, and even to photograph a water-colour drawing on to the wood, leaving the engraver to turn the tints into lines in his own way.