Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852. Various
as the sixth century – the Emperor Justin I., in signing documents, made use of what is now called a stencil, a thin plate of wood or metal perforated with figures, characters, or other designs, which, when applied to a surface of blank paper or parchment, leaves the design on the exposed surface of the paper, all else being covered, open to the operation of a brush or pencil, which necessarily leaves the impress of the form invariably the same on all occasions.
From this practice of stenciling, perhaps, or more probably from the dipping of the signet-ring, which had been used for ages in impressing wax and the like, into ink, and impressing it on paper, was derived the idea of stamps engraved with monograms, and used as signatures – an invention of vast practical utility in an age when not one man of five hundred, even of kings and nobles, unless he were in holy orders, was capable of signing, or even reading, his own name. One of the earliest of these stamps is that of Gundisalvo Tellez, one of the Gothic invaders of Spain, affixed to a charter bearing date A. D. 840; and the same sign, after his death, was appended, by his widow, Flamula, to a grant for the good of her husband’s soul.
Now it has never been asserted or pretended that the Chinese, even at a much later period than this, had advanced beyond the use of monogram stamps impinged by hand.
In lack, therefore, of more direct evidence, this is enough to justify us in rejecting the claim put forward in behalf of the Chinese, to the invention of the art of wood-engraving or typography, and the idea of its having been imported from them into Europe.
But there is no lack of more direct evidence. For in the year of the Christian era 1271, Marco Polo, a Venetian trader, voyaged from Venice to Tartary and China, in the reign of the Emperor Rublai Khan, his uncle and father having visited the same countries some quarter of a century before. On his return, he published an account of his travels, very copious and very full of marvelous truths and marvelous errors – most of the latter having been since shown to be misconceptions of real truths, not falsehoods. In this work, Marco Polo makes no mention of the use of printing-blocks, or of cannon, or of the mariner’s compass by the Chinese. Hence it is morally certain, either that the Chinese did not at that period possess any one of these inventions – all of which have been attributed to them – at all, or that the people for whom Marco Polo wrote, the Venetians in particular, and Europeans in general, possessed them in the same degree of perfection with the Chinese, at the same or at an earlier period.
It is, indeed, probable, that the Chinese claim was only put in by favorers of the Venetian claim to the European invention or introduction of this art, in order to account reasonably for their priority.
And it would be curious, were it not almost invariably the case, that the forged legend introduced to support a false claim, when analyzed and searched by a clear head, not only confutes itself, but that which it was intended to establish.
It is very satisfactorily proved that previous to the fourteenth century, although stencils and stamps had been in use for some time, perhaps for some centuries, as means for securing the invariability of monogram signatures, and of giving the power of signing papers to those who could not write, no use whatever had been made or attempted of either, for the purpose of reproduction from a single type and indefinite multiplication of copies.
This is what we mean by printing and engraving; and until it be shown that some nation of antiquity did invent and use such instruments for such purposes, all discussion is absurd.
It were just as rational to argue, that, because the Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans possessed boilers, and boiling water, and steam, with which they might have propelled steamboats, had they known how, therefore they had steamboats – as to assert, that, because they possessed reversed moulds and stamps, in relief or intaglio, for the making of pottery, with which they might have produced colored impressions on papyrus or linen, had they conceived the idea of doing so, therefore they did reproduce works of art from plates or types.
It appears most probable that the first direct approach to this art was the practice, when playing cards were first introduced in Europe, of the German card-makers, to use stencils in order to draw, accurately and invariably, the outlines of the figures on their cards, which were then filled in with color by the hand. This, though not originally intended to facilitate multiplication so much as accuracy, would naturally suggest that idea.
The next known step, in progress, was the use of monogrammatic stamps, some of them of most elaborate and exquisite design and execution, for the impression on illuminated manuscripts, such as missals, breviaries, bibles and other religious works, of the large, beautiful and often many-colored initial letters.
And these, there is much reason to believe, were more or less in use so early as A. D. 1400.
The history of the first known wood-cut is as follows. From a convent within fifty miles of Augsburgh, where in 1418 the first mention of a kartenmacher, card-engraver, occurs, the earliest wood-cut known – the St. Christopher, now in the collection of the Earl of Spencer – was obtained. The outlines are engraved on wood, and thence taken off in dark coloring matter, resembling printer’s ink, on the paper; after which the impression appears to have been colored by means of a stencil.
This cut is extremely well-designed, as regards the principal figures, which, with the exception of the extremities, are executed in such style as would not disgrace Albert Durer himself. The perspective is – as usual, in old wood-cuts even of a later date than this, and executed by artists of high grade, such as Hans Burgmair and Hans Schaufflein, nearly a century afterward – utterly disregarded. It was, indeed, scarce understood.
The second and third cuts in existence, also in Lord Spencer’s collection, are an “Annunciation” and “St. Bridget,” both similarly printed in outline, and colored by stenciling, the last of these is curious, as showing, on examination of the back of the plate – for it is not, like the others, pasted into a book – that the impression was not taken by means of a press, but by friction on the paper superimposed to the block, by means of a burnisher or similar instrument, just as proofs are now taken by engravers.
From this period, the succession and progress of the art is clearly to be traced. First, through figure blocks, with letterings sculptured on them in relief, to solid blocks carved in wood and printing off entire pages, as is done by modern stereotypes, with or without pictures attached. At this stage of the work the idea of reproduction and multiplication had obtained as the primary objects of the art.
The next step was the invention of movable types capable of being combined at will into words and sentences, braced into the form of pages, and, the work completed, distributed, and combined anew for the composition of other and different works. From this period, wood-engraving proper, and type-cutting in wood, became separate arts; and ere long – metallic types engraved at first, and afterward cast, replacing the wooden letters – the latter passed into oblivion, while the former has increased gradually and steadily, though with occasional pauses and interruptions, until the present day; when it has attained its highest known perfection, while it is still so far progressive, that it is not easy to predict what may be expected of its future improvement and excellence.
And here it may be well, since few persons comparatively speaking, even of those who are admirers and more or less judges of the art, have a distinct idea of its precise character and nature, to explain briefly in what it consists and wherein it differs from engraving on copper or steel.
All engraving consists of cutting with a sharp instrument into a hard surface, whether of wood or metal, so that when the picture is perfected on the wood or metal, ink may be applied to the surface, from which fac-similies may be taken off by the impression of moistened paper on the block or plate by means either of friction or pressure.
The practice thus far is identical whether steel, copper or wood is to be the material engraved.
But with this all similarity ends.
In steel or copperplate-engravings the ink, when applied, is received into the engraved lines, and is wiped off from the prominent portions; so that, in the impressions taken on paper, the lines cut into the plate communicate the shades, the portions left in relief on the plate remain colorless and blank.
In wood-engravings, on the contrary, the ink, when applied, is taken up by the parts left prominent, and