Only woodcuts (see our posts of 1-3 June 2009) have illustrated the printed book longer than copperplate engravings.
In this illustration technique,
[t]he surface of a copper plate (1-3 mm thick) is smoothed before engraving and coated with a thin layer of varnish, chalk, soot or wax. The drawing is done in mirror-image on this layer, then the lines are incised in the metal with a graver or burin. Metal shavings are removed. Surfaces are created with densely juxtaposed lines. The ridges thrown up on both sides of the incised furrows are removed (unlike drypoint etching) with a scraper although they can be left to create particular effects in the print. Before printing takes place, the plate is heated, covered with ink. The warm ink seeps into the finest of depressions and fills the lines and textures of the drawing. The rest of the plate is cleaned off. The copper plate is now pressed with a printing press on to moistened paper which soaks up the ink from the depressions in the plate. (Most intaglio illustration techniques revolve around a core of similar processes, as will be seen in this short video.)
The results achieved with this technique are often quite extraordinary, as seen in this copperplate engraving of the title page of Aquatilium Animalium Historiae... (1554):
Copperplate engraving was the overwhelming choice for illustrating printed books with maps for almost three centuries (mid-16th to mid-19th centuries). Again, the results often are quite extraordinary, as seen in this copperplate-engraved map (the earliest obtainable Postel projection of the world) from Hugh Broughton's A Concent of Scripture (1587):
Regrettably, most of the earliest examples of printed books illustrated by copperplate engraving are no longer available in the marketplace--some because they have long since been removed to institutional safekeeping in libraries and archives, others because they have fallen prey to that foe of serious book collectors, the book breaker (who removes illustrations from books so they can be sold as stand-alone prints)....
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