Engraving and Etching 1400-2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes by Ad Stijnman (review)

Histories of prints often begin with an outline of printmaking processes. In the case of Arthur M. Hind's standard A History of Engraving and Etching from the 15th Century to the Year 1914 (3rd edition, 1923), the technical information is given 'in just sufficient detail to enable the student of the history of engraving to obtain a proper comprehension of cause and effect'. With the same intent, we have a number of excellent brief guides to printmaking processes. Now for the first time Ad Stijnman has given us a major study in which the focus is the making of prints. This is the history of printing, not the history of prints. Art historians, Stijnman argues, generally have little hands-on experience of printmaking, while printmakers are not well informed about the history of their craft. As a practicing artist and printmaker, he is able to give informed accounts of the processes involved and intends his book 'to guide art historians, art lovers and artists through the workshops of engravers and printers of the past, and of printmakers of the present' (p. 3). The scope of the book and its dual audience of historians on the one hand and practicing artists on the other, is predicated on the overarching history of printmaking. The early engravers were artist-printmakers, but from the end of the fifteenth century increasing specialization separated draughtsmen, printmakers and printers; mechanization and photography brought an end to commercial engraving and the manual printmaking processes were once again in the hands of artist-printmakers doing their own printing.

This major work is based on an exhaustive study of practical manuals of intaglio plate-making and printing published in European languages from 1546 to 1979. Central to the book is an annotated bibliography of these works. The manuals provide data for the two main chapters of the book, one on making the plates, the other on printing them. These chapters are preceded by two shorter chapters, the first on the pre-history and early history of etching and engraving, the second on 'The Trade of Intaglio Printmaking', dealing with the economics and organization of the trade.

It is often said that Joseph Moxon's Mechanick Exercises (1685) and other letter press printers' manuals are idiosyncratic and cannot be relied on as guides to normal workshop practice. We are told firmly that 'This is proved different in intaglio printmaking', historical references, marks of provenance and signs of use found in surviving copies 'testify to the presence of technical manuals in engravers' studios from the seventeenth century up to the present day' (p. 11). Stijnman is more cau tious about accepting visual evidence for printing practices, such as images of workshops and equipment. He characterises sixteenth-century examples as mainly allegorical; in the seventeenth century they are 'genre-like' and only become more factual in the eighteenth century. Thus the reality of what is depicted can only be interpreted by comparing images with each other, with descriptions and inventories, and by modern reconstructions. This critical approach to sources is admirable, so it seems a pity that the visual sources are not catalogued with as a much care as the textual ones. Those deemed to be of value are reproduced, but others are dismissed out of hand without being illustrated. For example, Jean Errard's illustration of a rolling press, published in his Premier Livre des Instruments Mathématiques Méchaniques (1584), is not reproduced on the grounds that it is speculative and probably never constructed. This may be so, but it is significant for showing a perceived need for a press which could print both relief and intaglio plates.

The bibliography of practical manuals is an invaluable reference work. Organized under 625 author entries, items 1-370 describe books and manuscripts, 371-625 journal articles. These numbers refer...