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What wood-engravings are

Illustrations can be added to pages of text by wood-engraved blocks with the illustration cut in relief. These can then be placed along with the type to make up the printing plates from which the pages of the book will be printed. This makes it possible to add decorative opening letters to pages of text, to add illustrations both in the text or in the margins, or to add full page illustrations on text free pages or vignettes at the head or tail of chapters. This adaptability has made wood-engraving the most flexible of all the kinds of book illustration.

As both movable type and wood-engraved illustrations stand out in relief from the printing plates they can be printed together in the one operation. This makes wood-engraved illustrations the most natural companion to print, as well as being the original companion. The first examples printed in Europe date from the fifteenth century at the very beginnings of the history of printed books. There are earlier examples in China dating from as long ago as 868 AD.

Illustration that are printed in relief are often all referred to as wood-engravings or woodcuts, but in fact a number of different materials and methods have been used to used to produce them:

woodcuts - where the wood is cut away from the block to leave the illustration standing up in relief. Knives, chisels and other sharp edged tools are used to this. The edges of the lines sometimes show marks of the cutting and may be blurred.

wood-engraving - where the lines of the illustration are cut into the block using an engraving tool, usually a burin, and then the white areas between the lines are cut away leaving the black printing areas standing up in relief. Engravings usually have much sharper edges to the lines than woodcuts.

long-grain blocks - where the illustration is cut along the side of the wood block so that the grain of the wood will effect the character of strokes, making them thicker along the grain and narrower across the grain. The softer the wood the more this effect is pronounced.

end-grain blocks - where the illustration is cut into the end of the wood so that the grain does not effect the width of the cuts. Very hard woods are used for this, especially box wood.

linocuts - where lino is used instead of wood.

scraper-board - where a board coated with a layer of compressed china clay is used for the engravings. The surface is much like end-grain wood blocks, but easier to work.

However, all these produce much the same effect on the printed page, so much so, that unless stated in the book it would often be rash to be definite as to which was being used.