Mixed Trees
Tribute to Thomas Bewick
Impressions: $150.00 each
This is my nod to the originator of wood engraving, Thomas Bewick, and his emblematic English Oak Tree engraved in 1815.
I messed with it of course and made a photo-plate – printed as an etching and mirrored; as above so below.
Many moons ago I had a large portion of the original Bewick blocks in ny hands and could have bought them at 200 dollars apiece, but of course it was at a time in my life when that may as well have been two thousand or two million dollars each. What is interesting about them is how the master worked and evolved his technique. He had very irregular blocks that benefitted little from the mechanical age and one could print them only with a prodigious amount of effort and make-ready that would drive most any letter-pressman into paroxysms of self-loathing and despair. Bewick would simply dig out passages that didn’t work and smooth the hollows out and engrave back down into these excavated lacunae. There were places his blocks had clearly been recut several times and were as much as half an inch indented into hollows that would need to be built out in the must heroic of fashions to accept the paper for printing and then be pulled out again without damage. Inking the block would have required fabricating special rollers or dabbing it on fingertips or something else out of the ordinary. I did see restrikes that David Sanders had made and they must have been done by a pressman with the patience of all the saints. Printers imps must have made Bewick do this just to keep us all on our toes.