Collages of Wood Engravings on Japanese Handmade Paper

Leonardo, Vol. 12, pp. 123-124. Pergamon Press Ltd. 1979. Printed in Great Britain. COLLAGES OF WOOD ENGRAVINGS ON JAPANESE HANDMADE PAPER Albert Garrett* 1. Ordinarily engraving is done on end-grain boxwood blocks or metal plates of relatively small dimensions; nevertheless, ever since my student days, I have wanted to engrave on a larger scale than iscustomary. At the back of my mind, I have repeatedly considered the gross idea of the large engraving project ‘Triumphal Arch’, designed by Diirer for Emperor Maximilian I and executed by members of Diirer’s workshop and others [I], to be an outstanding example of what not to do. Yet, the large sensitively engraved silver salvers of the Renaissance are not gross; they persistently excite my imagination. I also realised that many excellent large artworks, such as the Raphael cartoons, would probably not have been improved if they had been made smaller. Like most students of engraving, I suppose, I first became aware of the difficulties to be overcome when I attempted to make an engravingof a size somewhat larger than the usual 10x 15 cm. When I showed my first attempt to my engraving master, John Buckland-Wright, he responded: ‘Ha, you have just missed it.’ I was yet to learn that Diirer’s early student blocks, which appeared in the Nuremherg Chronicle (1493), were only of the size 10x 15 cm and that it was 25 years later that he made ‘Portrait of Maximilian I’ of the size 32.0x 42.3cm. I also gradually increased the size of the block as I gained more experience over the years. Now I use a block whose major dimension is 45.5 cm. This, I feel, was a necessary preparatory stage toward the making of even larger engravings. 2. Duringthe past eight or nine years, I have made a series of 23 wood engraving collages entitled ‘Time-Line Development’,which are numbered in sequence[2]. These pictures are considerably larger than those that can be made conveniently by conventional engraving. Figure I (cf. color plate) and Figs. 2-4 show typical examples from this series. The largest one in the series is about 180cm in height. The serieswas made of Japanese handmade paper, a transparent material with a silk-like surface. One characteristic feature of this series is that each collage possesses a background made up of a rectangular array of four prints from a ‘key’ engraving. The background, which I call the ‘environment’,influences my selection of the parts that are superimposed on it. This is contrary to what one generally finds in pictures made by artists. I think of this influence in much the same way as the influence of the natural environment on the form of a particular species of fish as described by D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson [3]. ‘Artist, 10Sunningdale Avenue, Eastcote, Ruislip, Middlesex HA4 9SR. England. (Received 7 June 1978.) I began the seriesby making the ‘key’engraving. First, I printed an edition in black ink. These prints were not used in the series. Then I made additional prints in black ink on cream paper for use in making the ‘environment’. The four ‘key’ prints for each ‘environment’ were glued to white opaque Japanese paper serving as a backing. From additional engravings on coloured paper, I made cut-outs that I superimposed on the ‘environment’. As mentioned above, the choice of the cut-outs was made expressly to harmonize with the chosen ‘environment’. Since the paper is very thin, the resulting cut edges on the collages are difficult to see. The cut-outs of leaves in the collage entitled ‘Plant Buds’ shown in Fig. 1 (cf. colour plate) were printed in black ink on white paper. They appear blue or purple, depending on the light source and colour of the surroundings. In the case of ‘Strife’ (Fig. 2), the central shape was cut from a print in black ink on red paper. The density of the black ink on the red paper and the cream paper of the ‘key’prints is different. In the collages shown in Figs. 3and 4, the cut-outs are from prints made in black Fig. 2. ‘Strifi,‘. Time-Line Development Series, No. 7...