The commercial advantages generally claimed for engraved wood blocks are the ease and rapidity with which impressions can be made from them as compared with the metal plates, and also the fact that they can be printed with type, i.e. letterpress, without any unusual preparations. Granting the validity of these claims, it must follow that, owing to the larger number of impressions made from wood engravings, their intrinsic worth will be correspondingly less than the limited number of prints made from engraved metal plates, and their commercial value will be estimated accordingly.
A Justification.—The somewhat sweeping assertion that wood engraving affords a medium of expression only for the blunter minds is not the whole truth. Its strikingly bold conceptions and broad expressive effects certainly appeal to the untrained eye or untutored mind more than the artistic qualities of design and execution displayed in metal engraving; but there is yet in the art of the wood engraver a well-nigh inexhaustible store of artistic as well as pictorial effects. The forcible character and charm of its productions are chiefly due to the disposition and combination of the lines employed, and a variety of texture which is thereby introduced. It affords also an exceptional facility of execution, and an almost limitless power of realisation, which gives to it a deservedly high place among the pictorial and reproductive arts. The whole matter may be summed up in a statement once made by a well-known artist and illustrator: "There is no process in relief which has the same certainty, which gives the same colour and brightness, and by which gradations of touch can be more truly rendered. Few of our great artists, however, can be prevailed upon to draw for wood engraving, and when they do undertake an illustration, say of a great poem, the drawing, which has to be multiplied 100,000 times, has less thought bestowed upon it than the painted portrait of a cotton king." What wonder, then, at the retrogression of this facile and graphic art of pictorial illustration.
The Illustrator.—The employment of wood engravings in conjunction with literature created a new phase of artistic work. The task of the illustrator or designer is peculiar. He sketches out his design on the wood block, and then passes
it on to the engraver. His drawing is not intended as a permanent form of pictorial art, but as a suggestive sketch, which, while perfectly intelligible to the engraver, will be free from such intricacies in its composition as might interfere with its effective interpretation. The old wood engravers produced, line for line, an exact facsimile of the artist's design. His work, no doubt, required considerable skill and unremitting patience, but it was almost devoid of independent thought or artistic feeling. The engraver to-day must translate the work of the illustrator so as to render the effect of his design in such a form as will admit of rapid and effective reproduction. The possibilities of the wood engraver's art, therefore, are manifold. The artist's sketch may give a suggestion of light and shade, and possibly some idea of its tone. The execution and elaboration of the drawing is left almost entirely in the hands of the engraver. Whether it will gain or lose by its translation will, to some extent, depend upon his artistic perception as well as his manipulative skill.