Box of Box

As a happy consequence of a major reorganization of my woodworking shop I’ve collected all my boxwood scraps into one Rubbermaid container. They are not really cast-offs – naturally – but very useful to the block-maker. In fact, these bits could be looked upon as a kind of block-maker’s porn; very exciting stuff! I’ll be [...]

Paul Landacre on Wood Engraving

Paul Landacre is my wood engraving hero. Even more so now that I’ve come across this article he wrote on the subject in the early 1940′s for a book called The Relief Print Woodcut Wood Engraving & Linoleum Cut. For anyone interested in this subject you will be inspired by the following paragraphs! Wood Engraving [...]

New Virtual Booklet

I have added a new page flip booklet about wood engraving in my library. After a long absence I will be adding content that I hope is useful on this site while balancing my time in the studio. Hope you enjoy it. You can find it by clicking on this title; wood-engraving Like Unlike

History of Wood Engraving

Here is an article about wood engraving from 1844, reprinted along with illustrations from a sheet that I purchased at a very cool bookstore in Astoria, Oregon last November. Box is the wood mostly used by modern wood-engravers; pear-tree, and other wood of a similar grain and fibre, being now only used in executing large [...]

Wood Engraving Books

I have a number of out of print, antiquarian books on the subject of wood engraving and other topics that I would like to make available online. Of course the problem is how to do it in a efficient and interesting way. As an experiment I’m offering John Farleigh’s 1954 book, Engraving on Wood in [...]

Timothy Cole

Timothy Cole is another master wood engraver whose technical proficiency amazes me. He spent his entire career in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s interpreting the work of master painters like Constable and Hogarth. I happen to have in my possession his engraving of Mona Lisa, signed by him in pencil. It’s printed on a [...]

Spitsticker

Here’s another profile in the family of wood engraving tools – or cutters. Note that the sides are not straight but rather bowed like the hull of a boat. When incising a line with this tool a skilled engraver can vary the width of the line according to the depth of the cut. Some engravers [...]

Eric Bergman

One of my wood engraving heroes is Canadian artist Eric Bergman (1893-1958). He lived out his career in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a city dear to my heart. Although he pursued other forms of printmaking he settled on wood engraving exclusively in 1924. He said the following; “I find wood engraving a help in forming my own [...]

Printing on an Etching Press

I don’t have one of those massive old iron printing presses that you see in some studios and campuses (wish I did), like an Albion Press for example or better still; a Vandercook proofing press. Although it would be great to own one someday, I use my etching press very well for relief printing. The [...]

Landacre At Auction

This engraving titled Growing Corn by Paul Landacre recently sold at a Swann Galleries auction in New York for $7,200. Measuring 8 3/4 X 4 1/2 inches it was made in 1938. I see it was listed for $250 in an estate sale catalogue from the seventies that I have in my collection of wood [...]

Next Page »