Wood-Block Printing

Wood-Block Printing, by F.
Morley Fletcher,

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Fletcher, Illustrated by A. W. Seaby
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Title: Wood-Block Printing A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting
and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice
Author: F. Morley Fletcher

Release Date: December 26, 2006 [eBook #20195]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WOOD-BLOCK PRINTING***
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The Artistic Crafts Series of Technical Handbooks Edited By W. R.
Lethaby
WOOD-BLOCK PRINTING
A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting & Colour Printing Based on
the Japanese Practice
by
F. MORLEY FLETCHER
With Drawings and Illustrations by the Author and A. W. Seaby. Also
Collotype Reproductions of Various Examples of Printing, and an
Original Print Designed and Cut by the Author Printed by Hand on
Japanese Taper

[Illustration: Meadowsweet. Collotype reproduction of a woodblock
print by the Author. (Frontispiece.)]

London Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd. Parker Street, Kingsway, W.C.2
Bath, Melbourne, Toronto, New York Printed By Sir Isaac Pitman &
Sons, Ltd. Bath, England

EDITOR'S PREFACE
In issuing these volumes of a series of Handbooks on the Artistic Crafts,
it will be well to state what are our general aims.
In the first place, we wish to provide trustworthy text-books of
workshop practice, from the points of view of experts who have
critically examined the methods current in the shops, and putting aside
vain survivals, are prepared to say what is good workmanship, and to
set up a standard of quality in the crafts which are more especially
associated with design. Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design
itself as an essential part of good workmanship. During the last century
most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an academic kind, were
little considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as a
mere matter of appearance. Such "ornamentation" as there was was
usually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided
by an artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved in
production. With the critical attention given to the crafts by Ruskin and
Morris, it came to be seen that it was impossible to detach design from
craft in this way, and that, in the widest sense, true design is an
inseparable element of good quality, involving as it does the selection
of good and suitable material, contrivance for special purpose, expert
workmanship, proper finish, and so on, far more than mere ornament,
and indeed, that ornamentation itself was rather an exuberance of fine
workmanship than a matter of merely abstract lines. Workmanship
when separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought--that is, from
design--inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation,
divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls
into affectation. Proper ornamentation may be defined as a language
addressed to the eye; it is pleasant thought expressed in the speech of
the tool.
In the third place, we would have this series put artistic craftsmanship
before people as furnishing reasonable occupations for those who
would gain a livelihood. Although within the bounds of academic art,
the competition, of its kind, is so acute that only a very few per cent.

can fairly hope to succeed as painters and sculptors; yet, as artistic
craftsmen, there is every probability that nearly every one who would
pass through a sufficient period of apprenticeship to workmanship and
design would reach a measure of success.
In the blending of hand-work and thought in such arts as we propose to
deal with, happy careers may be found as far removed from the dreary
routine of hack labour as from the terrible uncertainty of academic art.
It is desirable in every way that men of good education should be
brought back into the productive crafts: there are more than enough of
us "in the city," and it is probable that more consideration will be given
in this century than in the last to Design and Workmanship.
* * * * *
There are two common ways of studying old and foreign arts--the way
of the connoisseur and the way of the craftsman. The collector may
value such arts for their strangeness and scarcity, while the artist finds
in