How Prints Look

Supposed you've decided that you really like fine prints - etchings, engravings, and all the rest - and you want to know a little about what you're looking at. This should be the first book you buy. It gives a detailed look at the specific marks that characterize each technique for printmaking. It shows, in microscopic detail, the traces of the printmaker's tools. It also readies the reader for the idea that printmakers can and often do use multiple different techniques in preparing a plate. I just wish there were slightly more of this outstanding material. The printing is black and white, because of the economics of book printing when this first came out. That does real disservice to the various color processes. The verbal description of color is good, but doesn't stand by itself. Its discussion of lithography could go into more detail about the marks from the stone itself, ditto side-grain vs. end-grain blocks for woodcut and wood engraving. It gives very good examples of some drypoint marks, but doesn't describe the sign that I consider most diagnostic. That's the asymmetric line, hard on one side and soft on the other, caused by the asymmetric drypoint burr. In other words, I just wish there were more of the book's outstanding content. This isn't about process, much, just about the result of each process. That's fine. Once a novice print-lover learns which marks are the most personally intriguing, I assume [s]he'll find more from other sources. This is just an introduction, and a lovely one. (...)

This is one of the most useful references available for learning the differences between various printmaking techniques. I have used the book myself and assigned it to museum graduate students since it was first published, as a practical compendium of most methods for graphic reproduction. The illustrations are not always crystal-clear, but each is well explained and makes a point about the method being explored. The many photographs of prints are well chosen to clarify the many differences and similarities of print techniqes.