Intaglio (printmaking) - Brief History

Brief History

Intaglio engraving, as a method of making prints, was invented in Germany by the 1430s, well after the woodcut print. Engraving had been used by goldsmiths to decorate metalwork, including armour, musical instruments and religious objects since ancient times, and the niello technique, which involved rubbing an alloy into the lines to give a contrasting colour, also goes back to late antiquity. It has been suggested that goldsmiths began to print impressions of their work to record the design, and that printmaking developed from that.

Martin Schongauer was one of the earliest known artists to exploit the copper-engraving technique, and Albrecht Dürer is one of the most famous intaglio artists. Italian and Netherlandish engraving began slightly after the Germans, but were well developed by 1500. Drypoint and etching were also German inventions of the fifteenth century, probably by the Housebook Master and Daniel Hopfer respectively. The golden age of artists engraving was 1450–1550, after which the technique lost ground to etching as a medium for artists, although engravings continued to be produced in huge numbers until after the invention of photography. Today intaglio engraving is largely used for currency, banknotes, passports and occasionally for high-value postage stamps. The appearance of engraving is sometimes mimicked for items such as wedding invitations by producing an embossment around lettering printed by another process (such as lithography or offset) to suggest the edges of an engraving plate.

• Plates are usually made from copper or zinc
• Formerly used extensively for high-quality magazines, fabrics and wallpapers
• Common uses still include some postage stamps and paper currency, at one time used for all mass-printed materials including banknotes, stock certificates, newspapers, etc.