Wood engraving
The wood engraving (conceptually somewhat inaccurately as xylography called), even wood crack , is a common use today only for artistic purposes method of high-pressure process , which in the late 18th century by Thomas Bewick from the woodcut was developed.
With the Age of Enlightenment , an era began in which the demand for magazines and books made it necessary to print runs of previously unknown amounts. For publications of all kinds, but especially for popular scientific presentations, inexpensive, but at the same time differentiated, meaningful illustrations were required . Two hundred years earlier, copper engraving had replaced woodcut as the dominant technique for reproducing images. However, copperplate engraving found it difficult to meet the new requirements because it was complex to manufacture, i.e. expensive, and unsuitable for long runs. Since copperplate engraving is a rotogravure printing process , but the texts in letterpress printing were created in a relief printing process , illustrations made in copperplate engraving had to be printed separately from the text and were usually added as panels afterwards.
The English graphic artist and engraver Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) therefore developed a more cost-effective and similarly efficient reproduction technique . To do this, he returned to wood as a material, but revolutionized the methods of its application. The woodcut was a relief printing process and therefore made it possible to insert the images into the set and to print them together with it.
For the classic woodcut, mostly relatively soft fruit tree woods were used, which, like usual boards, had been sawn in the direction of the wood fiber ( long wood ). Cutting knives and notching knives as well as - for larger areas - chisels and gouges were the tools with which those parts were deepened that were not later to print. With this technique, powerful graphic effects could be achieved, but not fine gradations of light and dark and detailed images in small formats - very narrow webs would have broken away in the soft, lengthways grained wood.
By choosing a hard wood that was cut across the grain, Bewick created a hard surface that, similar to copper engraving , could be worked on with burins , allowed fine tonal gradations and made the representation of the finest details possible - and thus invented wood engraving.
The development of wood engraving
With the further development of copper engraving , the woodcut as the older xylographic process lost its importance as a means of artistic expression. Compared to the woodcut, the copper engraving allowed a finer tone gradation and more detailed representation: In the woodcut, darkness and lightness arise solely from the width and spacing of the printing lines. In copper engraving, on the other hand, the depth of the engraved lines determines the strength and gradation of the darkness. The copper engraving was thus the more interesting medium for an artist. This only changed when, towards the end of the 18th century, the English graphic artist Thomas Bewick turned all previously valid topiary rules on their head and thus revolutionized the woodcut.
Thomas Bewick was the first to start engraving his motifs no longer in long wood, as was customary in the past, but in hardwood cut across the grain and thus fiber, the so-called end- grain or heartwood of hardwoods such as boxwood . He also used other tools, the burins with different, mostly V-shaped cross-sections. These tools came from the copperplate technique . Gravers worked effectively - they replaced two knife cuts with each thrust. However, in contrast to copper engraving, wood engraving is a relief printing process, i.e. white areas are removed and areas and lines to be printed are left behind.
The end grain offered the burin the same, easily controllable resistance in every direction - unlike the sometimes difficult to calculate long wood. Above all, however, it allowed parallel and cross lines of density and precision previously unattainable in woodcuts and thus the representation of the finest tonal gradations and details. Even the smallest elements could no longer break out because they were firmly anchored in the wooden panel with the vertical fibers. All of this made possible a differentiated tone gradation, which made the wood engraving equivalent to the copper engraving. The printing block made from end-grain wood came close to steel in terms of hardness and thus even surpassed copper engraving.
Bewick himself mostly created small-format, artistically illustrative images, in which the new technology can be read, but which in appearance still bear strong resemblance to the traditional woodcut. With the refinement of the method, this impression was lost.
The rise of wood engraving in the 19th century through clay engraving
Xylography became the most widely used reproduction technique for illustrations in the 19th century. Technically perfect, socially respected and highly paid skilled workers ensured that the constantly growing demand for printed images could be satisfied.
Gustave Doré , in collaboration with his xylographers, who signed each engraving, brought the so-called clay engraving to great perfection. While the usual wood engraving looks like a reproduced pen drawing, the finest light-dark gradations can be created in tone engraving through more or less dense lines, so that the impression of a washed ink drawing is created. In the second half of the century, even photographs with their highly differentiated tonal values were transferred to the tone cast . In addition, artists such as Honoré Daumier and Gustave Doré in France, Ludwig Richter and Adolph Menzel in Germany provided drawings with detailed information for the implementation in the clay engraving . Menzel in particular also complained about the sober routine to which the craft of xylographers was often frozen.
The raster technique required to reproduce gray levels in mass printing had not yet been invented and so photographs had to be transferred to wood engravings . The hard end grain allowed immediate print runs of 100,000 pieces and more. Often, however, the original wood engraving was no longer used for the actual printing, but only for the production of copies from which one could then print. Common were stereotypes or clichés , which provided diminished but sufficient quality for most purposes, or electroformed copies, the print results of which could hardly be distinguished from the original.
In the 19th century, companies or artist studios referred to themselves as “Xylographische Anstalt” (“XA” or “XA” as a supplement to signets on wood engraving), for example Johann Gottfried Flegel , Richard Brend'amour and Eduard Hallberger .
Development since 1900
Around 1900 the photomechanically rasterized cliché caught on. The wood engraving was initially suppressed in press products, later also in other areas, but occasionally remained as a commercial application well into the 20th century; Even in the 1960s it was to be found in some advertising catalogs, documentation and specialist literature because of its clear, specific representations.
Various graphic artists contributed to the artistic renewal of the wood engraving or the wood crack in the 20th century. To be mentioned here are:
- Wladimir Faworski (1886–1964), temporarily lecturer at an avant-garde school for design in Moscow .
- Imre Reiner (1900–1987), painter, graphic artist and typographer who worked in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and later in London, Paris, New York and Chicago.
- Karl Rössing (1897–1987), born to German parents in Gmunden / Austria , who taught in Essen , Berlin and Stuttgart .
- Ursula Wendorff-Weidt (1919–2000), born and died in Berlin, painter, graphic artist and book illustrator.
- Werner Klemke (1917–1994), book artist and professor at the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art .
- Otto Rohse (1925–2016), graphic artist and book artist in Hamburg .
- Werner Wittig (1930–2013), printmaker in Radebeul .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Source: Anja Grebe: The universal illustrator - Gustave Doré and his images on the Holy Scriptures, page 6. Supplement to: The Holy Scriptures of the New Testament illustrated by Gustave Doré , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2005.
literature
- Eva-Maria Hanebutt-Benz: Studies on German wood engraving in the 19th century. Frankfurt a. M .: Booksellers Association 1984. With lists of xylographers and xylographic studios. ISBN 3-7657-1262-0
