. Ariadne florentina; six lectures on wood and metal engraving, with appendix; given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas term, 1872. . great-coat WOOD ENGRAVING. 95 —the whole of the Lord Chancellors gown,and of John Bulls and Sir Peter Teazles com-plexions, are worked with finished precisionof cross-hatching. These have indeed somepurpose in their texture; but in the mostwanton and gratuitous way, the wall belowthe window is cross-hatched too, and that notwith a double, but a treble line (Fig. 4). There are about thirtyof these columns, withthirty-five interstices each :approximatel
. Ariadne florentina; six lectures on wood and metal engraving, with appendix; given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas term, 1872. . great-coat WOOD ENGRAVING. 95 —the whole of the Lord Chancellors gown,and of John Bulls and Sir Peter Teazles com-plexions, are worked with finished precisionof cross-hatching. These have indeed somepurpose in their texture; but in the mostwanton and gratuitous way, the wall belowthe window is cross-hatched too, and that notwith a double, but a treble line (Fig. 4). There are about thirtyof these columns, withthirty-five interstices each :approximately, 1,050—cer-tainly not fewer—inter-stices to be deliberately cutclear, to get that two inches ^^^- 4- square of shadow. Now calculate—or think enough to feel theimpossibility of calculating—the number ofwoodcuts used daily for our popular prints, andhow many men are night and day cutting 1,050square holes to the square inch, as the occu-pation of their manly life. And Mrs. BeecherStowe and the North Americans fancy theyhave abolished slavery ! 98. The workman cannot have even the con-solation of pride; for his task, even in its. g6 III. THE TECHNICS OF finest accomplishment, is not really difficult,—only tedious. When you have once got intothe practice, it is as easy as lying. To cutregular holes without a purpose is easy enough ;but to cut /rregular holes with a purpose, thatis difficult, for ever;—no tricks of tool or tradewill give you power to do that. The supposed difficulty—the thing which, atall events, it takes time to learn, is to cut theinterstices neat, and each like the other. Butis there any reason, do you suppose, for theirbeing neat, and each like the other ? So farfrom it, they would be twenty times prettierif they were irregular, and each different fromthe other. And an old woodcutter, instead oftaking pride in cutting these interstices smoothand alike, resolutely cuts them rough andirregular; taking care, at the same time, neverto have any mor
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjec, booksubjectengraving
