INTRODUCTION

HE following notes were originally written for two young people who love pictures, but who as yet have everything to learn about them. They are therefore addressed to the young, and to any others who may not have already made themselves familiar with the subject. Most of the existing books on etching very properly assume a certain amount of elementary knowledge on the part of the reader, but the aim of these notes is to begin at the very beginning, seeing that they are addressed, not to those who know, but to those who do not.

There is no surer safeguard toward keeping our children in the right way than by giving them such intellectual resources within themselves as are afforded by refining and ennobling pursuits, such as the love of nature, or of good books, good music, or good pictures.

"For Satan finds some mischief still, for idle heads to do.”

WHAT AN ETCHING IS

An etching is an impression printed from an etched metal plate - and not a pen-and-ink drawing, as is sometimes supposed.

Few people, comparatively, have ever examined one of these plates from which etchings are printed, but almost every one has seen the engraved copper-plate which prints a visiting card.

In examining such a card-plate it will be seen that the name it bears is cut into the copper, and cut in reverse or backward. To print a card from this plate a thick oily ink is rubbed into these engraved lines where it remains while the surface of the copper is wiped clean; a blank card is then laid over the plate, and both are passed through a roller press. The result is that the ink is transferred from the engraved lines in the copper-plate to the cardboard; each card printed requires a separate inking and wiping of the copper-plate. The printing process reverses the direction of the engraved inscription, so that what is seen to the right on the copperplate is seen to the left in the proof printed from it.

Now the principle is the same in printing an etching, and when it is once clearly understood how an etching is printed it will be easy to learn how the etched plate, which prints these impressions, is made.

HOW AN ETCHING IS MADE

An etched plate is usually of copper (though both steel and zinc are sometimes used). The plate is coated with a sort of varnish composed of wax and other ingredients, and upon this

"ground" the artist draws his design with an etching-needle. Each line so drawn displaces the coating or ground and leaves the copper bare. The plate is then immersed in a preparation of aqua-fortis, and wherever a line has been drawn, the powerful acid corrodes or "bites" a corresponding line or channel into the copper, while at the same time it does not reach those parts of the plate which remain protected by the varnish. It is in this way that aqua-fortis does the actual engraving of an etched plate; while in engraving proper, the lines which form the composition are cut into the copper by means of a tool.

When the plate has lain in the "bath" until all the lines of the design have been "bitten in" by the acid, it is taken out, and if it were then cleaned, it could be printed from in the manner already described. By remembering how the cardplate is printed from, we will readily understand that the black parts of the printed etching will correspond to the lines bitten into the copper, while the white parts will correspond to those spaces of the copper surface which have been protected from the acid by the "ground" or varnish.

But our plate is not yet finished; for if a trial proof were now printed it would be seen that all the lines of the composition were of an equal strength, and we know that in any picture the nearest objects must be drawn with the strongest lines, and that the lines must diminish in force to express comparative distances. To effect this,

all the lightest lines of the etched plate are filled in, or "stopped out" with the varnish, so that when it is immersed in the bath a second time the acid no longer reaches them, while this second biting adds strength to the other lines. Further "stoppings out" with varnish and "rebitings" with the acid are necessary before the various lines of the plate have their proportionate gradations of force and tone.

WHAT A DRY-POINT IS

Although most etchers occasionally produce plates by the dry-point process, yet the two arts are distinct, and the term "a dry-point etching" is a misnomer. The word etching means corrosion (with aqua-fortis), while in dry-point no acid is applied to the plate, but the lines are cut directly into the dry copper by means of the point or needle. Dry-point is really a sort of freehand engraving, but the result is widely different in effect from the formal exactitude of line engraving. The rich and velvety effect of a dry-point is owing to the "burr," or rough edge of the copper, which the "point" throws up as it cuts the plate; this "burr" is purposely left in certain parts of the plate, because as it projects above the surface it can retain more of the ink than any other sort of line, and this rich supply of ink is transferred to the paper in printing. A dry-point will not yield nearly so many good proofs as an etched plate, but the early impressions are very soft

and beautiful. Many etched plates are afterward finished and enriched with dry-point.

HOW ETCHINGS ARE PRINTED

There is one radical difference between the printing of etched or engraved plates on the one hand, and the printing of wood-cuts, lithographs, music, and letter-press on the other. This difference is, that in the latter case it is the surface which leaves its impression in ink upon the paper, while the case is reversed with engraved or etched plates, for it is the surface which prints white and the cut in lines which print black. To print the pages of a book or the wood-cuts that are inserted with the type, an inked roller is rapidly passed over the surface, and this surface imprints its inked impression on the paper. This is done so rapidly that a large edition of a book or a newspaper can be printed by machinery in a few hours and the special value of the wood-cut or the "process" plate is that it can be thus printed rapidly and cheaply along with the letter-press.

But when we come to the printing of an etched plate, the conditions are changed. The work which, in the case of the wood-cut or the letterpress, literally "went by steam," now requires great deliberateness and great knowledge, for the printing of etchings is a fine art, and the man who can print them worthily must himself have the spirit of an artist - just as the man who would perform a composition by Beethoven must himself be a musician.