Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> It has often been rubbed into us in the literature of glass that English engraving was never up to much and that in any case the first engravers lin this country were of German or Bohemian erigin (which is no doubt true). Perhaps for this reason -a generally underdog sort of attitude to the subject-little really seems to have been done to identify the wheel-engraved work of the 18th and early 19th century an omission encouraged also by the circumstance that English engraving of this period seems on the whole to be in fact somewhat stereotyped and unenterprising. Perhaps when Dr. Seddon gives us his paper in May we shall begin to look at this question with new eyes I My task is in some ways simpler since I pro- pose to stick to engravers whose names are known and sometimes also whose works are known through signatures. I should also make it clear that I shall be dealing only with wheel-engravers and not with practitioners of the diamond-point. Although I do not propose to give a long his- torical retrospect it may perhaps be convenient at the outset to clear up two points the first technical the second historical First technique Wheel- engraving on glass as its name implies is executed by means of a series of (usually copper) wheels of varying diameter and thickness on to the edge of which an abrasive (usually at the period we are considering emery-powder) is fed in an oily medium. The depth of the cutting governs the apparent relief of the modelling of the subject engraved. These cuts with the harder metal wheels can subsequently be polished with wheels of progressively softer material (pewter lead wood cork etc.) using abrasives of a dimini- shing harshness (tripoli putty-powder etc.). Second history. Opinions have differed as to just when wheel-engraving was introduced into this country. (LL)