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Wood engraving

Printmaking technique

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Thomas Bewick developed the wood engraving technique in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century. His work differed from earlier woodcuts in two key ways. First, rather than using woodcarving tools such as knives, Bewick used an engraver's burin (graver). With this, he could create thin delicate lines, often creating large dark areas in the composition. Second, wood engraving traditionally uses the wood's end grain—while the older technique used the softer side grain. The resulting increased hardness and durability facilitated more detailed images.

Wood-engraved blocks could be used on conventional printing presses, which were going through rapid mechanical improvements during the first quarter of the 19th century. The blocks were made the same height as, and composited alongside, movable type in page layouts—so printers could produce thousands of copies of illustrated pages with almost no deterioration. The combination of this new wood engraving method and mechanized printing drove a rapid expansion of illustrations in the 19th century. Further, advances in stereotype let wood-engravings be reproduced onto metal, where they could be mass-produced for sale to printers.

By the mid-19th century, many wood engravings rivaled copperplate engravings. Wood engraving was used to great effect by 19th-century artists such as Edward Calvert, and its heyday lasted until the early and mid-20th century when remarkable achievements were made by Eric Gill, Eric Ravilious, Tirzah Garwood and others. Though less used now, the technique is still prized in the early 21st century as a high-quality specialist technique of book illustration, and is promoted, for example, by the Society of Wood Engravers, who hold an annual exhibition in London and other British venues.

Development of the term

The terms "woodcut" and "wood engraving" were used interchangeably in the early and middle part of the 19th century, until the modern distinction emerged towards the end of the century, with confusion often extending into the 20th century among non-specialists. At the start of the 19th, both "wood engraving" and "woodcut" were often used for both types, so that the title page of A History of British Fishes (1835), by William Yarrell boasts "illustrated by nearly 400 woodcuts", which in fact are all wood-engravings, from one of the classic works using the technique.

On the other hand, A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical (1839), by William Andrew Chatto, is almost all about woodcut and its much longer history, with Thomas Bewick only appearing from page 558. Chatto is ready to call individual woodcuts "cuts", but seems never to use "woodcut". Most of his illustrations are in fact wood engravings, by John Jackson, mostly reproducing woodcuts. Wood-engraving: A Manual of Instruction by William James Linton in 1884 and A History of Wood-engraving by George Edward Woodberry in 1883 are the same in their use of terms.

By the end of the century the modern distinction between the two terms for the two techniques was clear among specialists, with authoritative works like Campbell Dodgson's Catalogue of Early German and Flemish Woodcuts (in the British Museum, London, 1903) and eventually Arthur Mayger Hind's An Introduction to the History of Woodcut (1935). Both authors served as Keeper of prints and drawings at the British Museum.

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