Stipple engraving is a technique used to create tone in an intaglio print by distributing pattern of dots of various sizes and densities across the image. The pattern is created on the printing plate either by gouging out the dots, or through an etching process.[1] Stippling was used an adjunct to line engraving for many years, before, in the mid-eighteenth century,it was developed as an art in itself.[2]
The technique allows for subtle tonal variations and is especially suitable for reproducing chalk drawings. [3]
Stipple effects were used in conjunction with other engraving techniques by artists as early as Giulio Campagnola (c.1482 – c. 1515) and Ottavio Leoni (1578 – 1630). In Holland in the seventeenth century, the printmaker and goldsmith Jan Lutma developed an engraving technique, known as opus mallei, in which the dots are punched into the plate by an awl struck with a hammer, while in England, the faces of portraits were engraved with stippled dots by William Rogers in the sixteenth century, and Lucas Vorsterman in the seventeenth.[2]
An etched stipple technique known as the “crayon manner”, suitable for producing imitations of chalk drawings, was pioneered in France in 1757, by Jean Charles Francois.[3] William Wynne Ryland, who had worked with him [2] took the crayon manner to Britain, using it in his contributions to Charles Roger’s publication A Collection of Prints in imitation of Drawings,[3] and developing it further under the name of "stipple engraving".[2]
The process of stipple engraving is described in T.H. Fielding's Art of Engraving (1841). To begin with an etching ground is laid on the plate. The outline is drawn out in small dots with an etching needle, and the darker areas of the image shaded with a pattern of close dots. Then the plate is bitten with acid, and the etching ground removed. The lighter areas of shade are then laid in with a drypoint or a stipple graver: Fielding describes the latter as "resembling the common kind, except that the blade bends down instead of up, thereby allowing the engraver greater facility in forming the small holes or dots in the copper". The etched middle and dark tones would also be deepened where appropriate with the graver. [4]
During the late eighteenth century, some printmakers, including Francesco Bartolozzi began to use colour in stipple engraving. Rather than using separate plates for each colour, as in most colour printing processes of the time, such as Jacob Christoph Le Blon's three colour mezzotint method, the different colours were carefully applied with a brush to a single plate for each impression,[2] a highly skilled operation which soon proved economically unviable.[1]