WHICH is the more interesting and amusing—the drawing, biting, or printing of an etching has never been decided. But no artist is willing, if he can help it, to allow any one else, once he has mastered the method of work, to perform any part of the operation for him.

The printing of an etching is, in theory, very simple; in practice, it is most difficult, but most delightful.

The plate being bitten, as I have described in a previous lecture, must now be printed, for the prints from it, and not the plate itself, are the end of etching—really of all illustration.

You will have to spend several pounds on an etching outfit, so you had better get a good one. The small ones, including press, ink, chemicals, quite complete, sold by Roberson, of 99, Long Acre, are most excellent as far as they go, for small plates, and taking round the country with one on a sketching tour; but for serious work, a more practical set of tools is necessary. Therefore I would advise you first to take lessons of a good etcher, who will allow you to work with him, or to go to a printer and get him to show you how the work is done.

This is the method: the first thing to do is to obtain some good handmade paper, almost all old paper is excellent; it should be unruled, of course; often the tone of it is lovely, and it may contain most beautiful water-marks. I am referring to Dutch, French, English, or German papers of at least a century old. At times you may be able to pick up old ledgers, account-books, or packages of unprinted paper; treasure them up; if you don’t print etchings on them, there is nothing more delightful to draw upon. There are also Japanese and India papers, which give most beautiful delicate translucent effect to prints. Vellum, parchment, and even silk or satin may be printed on. But as a general rule the old handmade Dutch paper is the most satisfactory, if you can get it. For ordinary work and experiments, modern paper is quite good enough, and very good handmade paper can be obtained from Roberson’s. Let us suppose you are going to print; twenty-four hours before, take several sheets of paper, rather more than you want, in case of failure or for any other reason; cut the sheets the size you desire them, a little larger than the plate, so as to leave a decent margin. Cut the paper first; Japanese paper, for example, cannot easily be cut when it is wet. Get a sheet of window glass, lay it flat on a table, take the first sheet of paper and damp it on one side by passing a wet sponge over it, lay it on the glass; on top of this sheet lay another dry one; damp the top of that with the sponge; and continue laying down sheets and damping their upper faces till you have enough; put another sheet of window glass on the top, and a heavy weight upon it; in a day the whole mass should be completely dampened all through. I believe the same thing can be done by a copying press and book, and I have heard it is so done by lithographers, but the way I have described is the usual one that is followed by plate printers. The next thing is the press. A good secondhand one may be bought at Hughes & Kimber’s, West Harding Street, Fetter Lane, for about five pounds. Much depends, however, on the size and finish. You should have it brought to your studio, set up and adjusted for you by skilled workmen. Then you must buy a heater and a jigger for your plates, ink, oil, canvas, and a number of other things, dabbers, a muller, an ink-slab, and a big palette knife; all these will run up a bill of ten pounds or so.

But having your press and other things, let us go to work: light the gas-burners under the heater which you have bought; if too much flame comes out and makes the iron top too hot, plug up some of the jets. Put your plate on the top of the heater. First, however, see that your press is adjusted, so that the plate will fit in. To do this, put a piece of paper on the top of the plate and run it in the press to try it, and see if it goes under the roller without tearing the paper. Take some of the ink out of the can, or better, get it in powder, put it on the ink-slab and mix it with oil with the palette knife; then take the muller and grind the ink until it is thoroughly ground and mixed and of about the thickness of paint as it comes out of the tube. But each plate will require more or less oil or colour, and some brown, red, or possibly blue mixed with it to take off the crude raw look which pure black often has in the print. The plate being now warm, not so hot as to boil or burn the ink, dab with a dabber the ink from the slab all over the face of the plate (it is warmed to wipe the ink off easily), slide it from the heater to the wooden box called a jigger, which must be placed alongside the former. You should get a printer to arrange your things for you. Take a piece of the rag or canvas for wiping, double it carefully and loosely in your hand—this requires much practice—and remove all the ink which is on the surface of the plate. Even after you have wiped it some time, an oily film will remain, which, unless you polish the plate with whiting rubbed on your hand, you cannot remove, and you do not want to, because the oil gives a delicious tone to the print. Some ink may be left in places on the surface to increase and strengthen the work, but what you must learn to do is not to wipe any of the ink out of the bitten lines. This is very difficult, and if you do wipe it out, you must commence all over again, only the chances are that you will know nothing about this until the plate is printed. The colour may also be increased by going over the surface of the plate, having again warmed it, if it has become cool, with a bit of soft taffatas silk with a trembling muscular motion of the arm and fingers. This action, called retroussage, which must be seen to be understood, drags the ink slightly over the surface of the plate without taking much out of the lines.

Now take off the weights from your paper, take up a sheet, which should be thoroughly damped, first brushing it with a soft brush to remove any drops of water or dirt or dust. The paper should be placed near the press. Put the plate face upwards on the press, on which the blankets have been properly arranged—you must see this done for yourselves—the plate underneath of course; lay the sheet of damp paper on the face of the plate and run it through the press once; it is well to put a sheet of ordinary thick paper on the top of the damp sheet, otherwise the latter will stick to the blankets; raise the blankets and take up the first sheet of paper, the print will most likely adhere to that, if it does not, take it up carefully by one edge, it will come away from the copper, and you will find the print on the under side of it. Japanese and India prints require very careful handling, especially the latter. They are usually printed on to a sheet of plate paper by dusting it, or the back of the India paper, with flour; this, on passing through the press, is made into paste by the dampness of the India paper, and they are thus moulded together.

As soon as the prints are taken off the press, put them between sheets of blotting paper and allow them to dry for some time, they will come out flat; if you neglect this, they will crinkle up very badly, and are difficult to get smooth again.

This is the way a copper plate is printed, but you must see it done and practise for a long time before you can do it decently.

Colour prints from copper plates may be made in one or more ways. The various colours may be put on by applying them where they are wanted with stumps, or the plate may be painted by applying the colours with brushes. Several plates may be used, just as in lithography or coloured block printing, and these coloured plates wiped as I have been describing. Many prints, however, are coloured by hand after they are printed.

Mezzotints, acquatints, steel engravings, &c., are printed in the same way as copper-plates. The rubbing with the canvas and the hand, and the tremendous pressure to which the plates are subjected, quickly spoil the clearness and sharpness of the lines; therefore if any large number of prints are wanted, a coating of steel is put on the face of the copper-plate by steel-plating it; this protects the copper, and as soon as the steel facing shows signs of wear it may be removed, and a new film of steel applied; hence an unlimited edition can be printed in time from a copper plate. If it is necessary that the printing should be done more rapidly, electrotypes can be made from the original copper-plate (see electrotype and stereotype Lecture), and several printers can then work on these electrotypes at the same time. The electrotypes are rarely equal to the originals.

Such is a brief outline of the method of printing copper plates; but I cannot too strongly impress upon you the fact that it is a handicraft which, though most interesting, requires long apprenticeship, with a master printer, and in one’s studio, before good results can be obtained.