The Complete Engraver Book Tour Goes Viral

Nancy Sharon Collins is taking The Complete Engraver on the road, as a book tour.

Support her efforts to get the word out about stationery engraving.

A fantastic article was just posted on The New York Times website (though its written as if both MOMA and Clinique are active clients of Mrs. Collins—which they are not—correction forthcoming... ).

FREE fonts were developed by Terrance Weinzierl, Monotype Imaging, from antique engraver's lettering styles just for the project. (The photo on top shows Terrance holding an engraved trade card advertising the fonts. It was engraved by Hart Engraving in Milwaukee, and numbered individually in New Orleans on a Heidelberg letterpress).

Resources for Engraving

This list includes some resources and information about American commercial engraving and engraving for social stationary, it is by no ways complete. However, it is the beginnings of a more robust reference for intaglio engraving, and commercial engraving for stationery relevant to today: Some universities still have intaglio areas in their print making department for fine art etching and printing, one of these are great places to start.

There is a fully restored engraving proofing press in the graphic design department "dirty room" at Loyola University New Orleans. Small plates and dies, prepared commercially can be printed on it. Here are links to the entire, several year journey of the engraving proofing press:

http://typophile.com/node/61604
http://typophile.com/node/59459
http://typophile.com/node/58983
(Sample of the 1/2" thick steel dies for which the press was designed.)
http://typophile.com/node/51189

Photo-engraved* (etched) copper plates, art must be in vector, saved as Illustrator CS3 or earlier, or EPS:

Beaver Creek Engraving
P. O. Box 766
660 Creekside Drive
Dobson, NC 27017
336-356-8760
beavercreek@surry.net
rdoby@beavercreekengraving.com
http://www.beavercreekengraving.com/

Intaglio (copper) plate, ready to draw-on, comes with etching needle (to draw with—you have to draw flopped, as in backwards or mirror image). He etches, pulls a print, and ships it back to you (as in “print and ship”:

PrintShip
PO Box 86583
Portland OR 97286
503.348.9214
info@printship.net
http://printship.net/PS/Orders.html

Commercial engraver, (primarily a pressman—the guy who can take your commercially genegrated intaglio plate or die and print it) can provide plates from your vector art, as well as paper and the actual die stamping**:

Hart Engraving
4928 North 29th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53209-5407
414.445.5555
http://hartengraving.com/

International Engraved Graphics Association website includes their directory of commercial and stationery engravers:

http://www.iega.org/

A brand new online engraving community underwritten by Crane & Co. and Neenah Paper:

The Beauty of Engraving

http://thebeautyofengraving.com/

Another full service engraving shop, independently owned by a lovely married couple (she's the engraver and he's the pressman):

First Impressions

900 East Jefferson Street
La Grange, KY 40031
(502) 265-9821
www.firstimpressionfse.com/

Pneumatic engraving system, developed for engraved jewelry, guns and fine knives, GSR is working with University of Kansas at Emporia on intaglio engraving for print:

GRS Tools
900 Overlander Rd.
P.O. Box 1153
Emporia, KS 66801
1-800-835-3519 or 620-343-1084
http://www.grstools.com/

The first [program] “in the world” to offer a BFA in engraving arts.

http://www.emporia.edu/engravingarts/instructor.html

Contact:

James Ehlers
The Don & Mary Glaser Distinguished Professor of Engraving Arts
Emporia State University
astronautlover@gmail.com
jehlers@emporia.edu
http://www.jamesehlers.org/

Trade school for engraving the old fashioned way (James Ehlers, above, calls this “push engraving”) with graver or burin, though their instruction is for jewelry (which is right-reading. Remember, for intaglio printing you would have to learn to do this backwards.) This is one of the oldest continuously running trade schools in the country.

http://www.gemcitycollege.com/engraving.php

Master engraver (jewelry and fire arms, though doing only jewelry these days), Sam offers private lessons and instruction on the GRS machine as well. (Sam spent 3 years of his own time perfecting replicating engraved scroll work through vector art in Illustrator, check-out his website for this, great resources, too, though not for print) :

http://www.masterengraver.com/

Sam demonstrates engraving script:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s9hOGwUF-s&feature=related

Extreme close-up of engraving scroll work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dn5P98sWYw&feature=related

Fine shading and cross-hatching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck8Q6xJJB4I&feature=related

Master engraver (the old fashioned way for jewelry, primarily, but also collaborating with intaglio print makers). Proprietor Yvette Rutledge is also a master lettering artist, tell her I referred you. Through the Center for the Lettering Arts, Eve is trying to get together a class for print and metal engravers:

Mystic Blue Signs
2212 Magazine Street
New Orleans, LA 70130
504-525-4691
http://mysticbluesigns.com/

Beginning engraver, learning from her Dad, master gun smith Ed DeLorge:

J. Emily DeLorge
http://www.etsy.com/people/JEMengraving

Louisiana Engravers Society, fledgling organization of south Louisiana regional engraving practitioners and enthusiasts:

http://handengravedstationery.blogspot.com/
http://thesttammanynews.com/articles/2011/01/30/northshore_life/community/doc4d445fd9510c4232164706.txt

The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver 1480-1650, print engraving exhibit with online components, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (engraving demos in Flash, I think, and also a video—access video button is in the upper right hand corner on the navigation bar.)

http://www.risdmuseum.org/thebrilliantline/

* Also spelled “photo engraving” and “photoengraving”.
** Commercial engraving presses are actually die stamping presses or machines.

American Revolution Makes an Engraver from a Messenger

This country's most famous horse back rider, Paul Revere, was also an engraver.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year — a portion of "Paul Revere's Ride", first published in The Atlantic Monthly, 1861 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Its fairly common knowledge that Paul Revere, the subject of the now famous Wadsworth poem, was a silver smith who had followed in his father's footsteps in that trade. Even though he is most well known for that "midnight ride":

...the night of April 18/April 19, 1775, when he and William Dawes were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army, which was beginning a march from Boston to Lexington, ostensibly to arrest Hancock and Adams and seize the weapons stores in Concord. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Revere, Revere was also a gold smith, and, come to find out, an engraver.

Engraved commentary, civic and fiscal communications, cultural iconography and satire have long been subjects, and purpose, for goldsmiths wielding the mighty burin, thus did Mr. Revere take up one of his engraving tools and, ummm, appropriate the scene of the historic Boston Massacre and sell an edition of engraved prints for his own personal profit.

Well, the craft in his prints is not beautiful, but I guess he may have made a few coins scooping the efforts of two fellow commercial engravers:

Documentation has come to light over the years indicating that Revere copied engraver Henry Pelham's drawings of the Massacre, produced his own engraving, and three weeks after the occurrence was advertising his prints for sale in Boston's newspapers. By the time Pelham's prints hit the street, Revere's print had flooded the market. A third engraving was executed by Jonathan Mulliken, who also issued prints depicting the event. Except for a number of minor differences, all three prints appear alike. —http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/winter96/massacre.html

Its interesting to note that the specter of easy money is sometimes the motive for highfaluting goldsmiths taking a less lofty professional turn into selling popular editions of prints. (See "History" section in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsmith and "Cards" in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_the_Playing_Cards.)

Macro-photography of Engraved Stationery Die

This image is an extreme close-up of a portion of a steel engraved die, the original image area you are viewing is but 15mm X 20.1mm, that's way less than one inch square, and the digital image is approximately 34 inches wide at 240dpi. (Needless to say what you are viewing has been reduced for use on the internet.)

Visible at this clarity (although we will soon be able to provide even clearer images at this degree of enlargement) are several factors that go into what is this die.

First, it is both etched and touched-up with engraving, the tell-tale granular texture of the bottom of the deep areas is because etching corrodes the metal, thus rendering it much less light reflective than engraving.

Second, notice that some areas (the tops of the arches at top, right) reflect light and look smooth like ice. The engraving tool polishes the metal so light bounces off of it like a jewel.

Other areas of interest are the rust not noticable with the bare eye and the very interesting texture all around the edge (left and bottom) made by the file that beveled the edges of this 1/2" thick steel die. Also, there are many surface scratches that would not print with an engraving press but look kind of spooky here.

While creating this image it was discovered that, at this extreme magnification, minute vibrations blur the image. So, now we will work on stabilizing everything for absolutely maximum focus (and we will be able to get closer, too.)

Odd Ball Short Story

While researching the International Correspondence Schools recently, I was reminded of the odd-ball J.D. Salinger short story, De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period, about a young man reduced by sad personal circumstances to take a job as a correspondence art course instructor.

I was researching the correspondence school to find out from where this technical text book came.

There’s a great article about correspondence art schools by Steve Heller in the 12.15.09 Design Observer, too.

"What if Edith Wharton Facebooked" in AIGA Voice

Read the article, "What if Edith Wharton Facebooked" recently published in AIGA Voice about life, love, marriage, notoriety, privacy and social media, engraving and writing letters long hand, too.