t
has long been thought, by the present authors among others, that
Blake painted his plates using the standard à la poupée technique,
adapted for his purposes. Compared to any alternatives, the method
is direct, cost effective, and united with the art of painting (Essick,
Printmaker 125-35; Friedman 16; Viscomi, Idea 119-28).
Phillips does not believe this, but, citing Le Blon and Jackson
as precedents, argues that Blake adapted the more complicated manner
of printing and registering multiple plates by printing his own
plates twice, once for the text in ink and again for the illustration
in colors (95). It may seem that questions about printing technique
in general and color printing in particular are of no real importance,
but, as we argue below, using one or the other method significantly
affects our ideas about Blake’s works and their conceptual implications.
Phillips recognizes what is at stake, for he claims that by not
recognizing the two-pull method we are grossly underestimating the
“time and skill” Blake invested in color printing and misunderstanding
his “intentions as a graphic artist” and his intended audience (95).
On these issues Phillips says little beyond some general observations
on Blake’s intended audience in his “Conclusion” (111-13). Nor does
he develop further the effect of his theory on our understanding
of Blake as artist, printmaker, theorist or poet. Surprisingly,
Phillips does not argue (let alone prove) that Blake’s visual effects
in color printing were not possible with single-pull printing.
In short, he does not directly consider (much less answer) the crucial
question: Why divide the printing process into text (first pull)
and illustration (second pull) to reunite them on paper if it was
technically and aesthetically unnecessary to do so?
According to Phillips, Blake produced his color prints by inking
the plate’s text areas, registering the paper to plate, printing
and removing the paper, wiping the ink off the plate, adding colors,
registering the paper exactly to the colored plate, printing and
removing the twice-printed paper from the bed of the rolling press,
and (presumably after drying) finishing it in water colors (95,
101, 107). To produce another print from the same copperplate, Blake
would
then begin the process anew by wiping the plate of its colors, inking
thetext areas, registering, printing, wiping the ink, adding colors,
registering, and finally printing. Phillips claims that a significant
part of his evidencefor this labor-intensive method in which text
is printed first and illustration second lies in the “Nurses Song”
from Songs of Experience in Songs of Innocence and of
Experience copy E (illus. 8). One can plainly see that this
impression was indeed printed twice, as Essick and Viscomi separately
recognized, but which they, according to Phillips, incorrectly identified
as an individual aberration rather than as one of the most significant
clues in revealing Blake’s color printing practice (Essick, Printmaker
127; Phillips 103; Viscomi, Idea 119). Phillips implies that
this “Nurses Song” deviates from other color prints only in that,
unlike them, it is misregistered, whereas all the other extant color
prints were perfectly registered.
Phillips cites Le Blon as an example of multiple-plate printing
to make the point that registering a plate onto a prior impression
was possible (95-96). He states that for the three primary colors
to be recombined into the original colors meant that “the precision
of the registration had to be absolute” (96). From this statement,
one might infer that Le Blon’s color prints show no signs of the
second or third plate—that is, reveal no signs of their mode of
production—but that one plate was registered on top of an impression
from the other so precisely that all telltale tracks were covered.
That, however, never happens.
Color prints produced with two or more plates or blocks—despite
the plates being exactly the same size—always show signs of their
production, usually to the naked eye but always under magnification
or computer enhancement. We have yet to find a multi-plate (and
hence multi-printed) color print that does not show evidence of
at least slight misregistration at some point along its margins,
usually at or near the corners. Such evidence generally appears
in two forms: either as multiple platemarks and/or as a displacement
of one color just outside another. For example, the top right corner
of Le Blon’s Van Dyck Self Portrait (illus. 9) reveals one
plate extending past the other. This effect is even clearer in the
bottom right corner of Le Blon’s Narcissus (c. 1720s) (illus.
10).
We see the same effect in all twenty of the prints in D’Agoty’s Myologie,
including plate 3 (illus. 11), which were thought by contemporaries
to be superior to Le Blon’s, and in all 53 of his smaller three-color
mezzotints for Observations sur l’histoire naturelle, sur la physique
et sur la peinture (1752-55), such as the Tortuise (illus.
12). Even the excellent two-color stipples of Louis Bonnet, such as
Head of a Young Girl Turned toward the Left (1774) (illus.
13), reveal in their corners two platemarks, one slightly displaced
from the other (illus. 14).
The signs of production are also visible in the very best impressions
of the mixed-method and pure chiaroscuro prints, including Kirkall’s
Holy Family and Jackson’s Descent from the Cross, where
the
tonal blocks extend slightly past the key blocks (illus. 15-16). Even
Jackson’s Venetian series—thought to be “without doubt the high point
of chiaroscuro printing” (Friedman 6)—reveal their mode of production,
as the corner of Holy Family and Four Saints, after Veronese
(1739), demonstrates (illus. 17). In all of these illustrations, it
is fairly easy to see the misregistrations.
Such subtle misregistrations are not signs of poor printing. They
are to be expected, as printing manuals today acknowledge, regardless
of the registration mechanism used, because damp printing paper
stretches and shrinks in the course of printing the first and subsequent
plates (Hayter 58, Romano and Ross 121, Dawson 100). Reviewing the
various techniques used in his Atelier 17 for registering and printing
multiple plates, Hayter, one of the greatest technicians of twentieth-century
printmaking, states that “it is worthy of note that none of these
methods is absolutely precise” and “examination of the edges of
colour prints made by this system [i.e., multiple plates] will nearly
always show some errors of registration between the different colours
. . . ” (58). Slight misalignments, however, will not disrupt the
visual logic and impact of the design; our eyes tend to make adjustments
or “read” a slight fuzziness in an image as a pleasingly painterly
style. The visual effect of multiple-plate color prints, in other
words, was not dependent on absolute precision but on colors being
overlaid one on top of the other. But the same eyes cannot be fooled
when focused on the margins. “Absolute” (Phillips 96) accuracy in
registration was impossible. [13]
“Nurses Song” in the Experience section of the combined
Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy E (illus.
8) clearly reveals its double printing. The next place to look
for evidence of Blake printing his plates twice—on the grounds that
modes of production can never completely conceal themselves, at
least not to magnification and computers—is his other color prints,
more than 650 of them. Given how poorly printed “Nurses Song” is,
one would reasonably expect to find other examples of misalignment,
albeit less overt. Yet not one of Blake’s other color prints reveals
any sign of misregistration of the plate onto the impression previously
printed in ink. Any suggestion that none exists because poorly printed
impressions were thrown away ought to give one pause. Such a practice
is refuted by “Nurses Song” and many of the other poorly printed
impressions in Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy
E and other illuminated books. It
seems clear that Blake rarely threw away anything he printed that
might be salvageable. He had little concern with the finer points
of precision
printing. If “Nurses Song” was acceptable (as its inclusion in a
complete copy of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience sold
to his major patron indicates), then any print less obviously misaligned
would be too, including hairline misalignments not easily seen with
the naked eye but visible under magnification. One would expect
to see quite a few impressions looking like illustrations 18 and
19, where the text and designs, having been printed twice ,
are slightly out of register. It takes only a hairline misalignment
of the second plate on top of an impression from the first—or on
top of a prior impression from the same plate—to produce this out-of-focus
effect. This is especially true with relief etchings like Blake’s,
because the images are essentially in outline rather than tonal
areas, which makes printing them twice analogous to double printing
the key block in a chiaroscuro woodcut or mixed-method chiaroscuro.
Even impressions that appear dead on, such as illustration 20, reveal,
when magnified, the soft
edges along the
letters that evince a second printing (illus. 21). In impressions
printed once, letters
and other relief lines do
not have any such ghosting (illus. 22), an absence characteristic
of Blake’s color prints, as is demonstrated by details of “The Fly”
and “Holy Thursday” (Experience) from Songs of Innocence
and of Experience copies G and E (illus. 23, 63)
respectively.
Phillips is correct to assume that Blake would have had to wipe
the plate completely clean of ink before adding colors (95, 101),
and then wipe the color off the plate before adding ink to pull
a second impression. This is necessary to help disguise even the
slightest errors in registration, for, as we have seen, if even
minute traces of ink remain on the plate during its second printing
and the registration is anything less than absolutely exact, then
it will produce a slightly fuzzy impression. The same is true for
the colors: if they are left on the plate, then they will be printed
twice in the subsequent impression, once with the ink and once when
colors are replenished. The slightest misregistration will show
up. Masking techniques like
these, however, work only to a point; the subtlest of misalignment
may fall below the threshold of vision, but it can be detected with
magnification and computer enhancement because relief lines or areas,
even when devoid of ink or colors, still slightly emboss the paper
around their edges. For example, the plate borders in “Nurses Song”
in Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy F were wiped
of ink but still embossed the paper (illus. 24). Such embossment
is especially noticeable even without magnification in impressions
color printed from both the relief plateaus and etched valleys of
plates, such as
those in Songs of Innocence and of Experience copies F, G,
H, and T1, The Book of Urizen
copies
A, C, D, E, F, and J, Visions of the Daughters of Albion
copy F, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy F, as is
clearly evident in its plate 21 (illus. 25). If Blake printed his
plates twice with pressure sufficient to print colors from the shallows,
then the second printing, despite its carrying no ink, will reveal
itself as a set of embossed lines around the printed lines (illus.
26). No embossments or haloes of this kind are found in Blake’s
color prints. [14]
Even wiping the plate of ink and colors between pulls cannot erase
the signs of a second printing. Moreover, wiping oily ink usually
leaves signs, as is evinced by the
traces of ink on and along plate borders that Blake wiped of ink
(illus. 27a-27b). There are hundreds of examples of such traces
because Blake wiped the borders of nearly all illuminated prints
produced by 1794 (see, for example, illus.
51, 53).
In addition, wiping ink and colors for every pull is extremely wasteful
in practice. Inking and printing pressure normal for relief can
yield up to five useable prints from one inking in a dark color.
Illustration 28 ,
for example, is the third impression printed from one inking of
a facsimile plate. Indeed, in the Tate Britain exhibition, the second
pulls printed from facsimile plates were all more Blake-like than
the first pulls, which were too dark. With lighter inks, like the
yellow ochre used in Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy
E, one can produce at least two acceptable impressions (illus.
71, 72,
73). The
pigments, oil, and glues used to make inks and colors cost money,
and so do rags used to wipe the plates clean. These unnecessary
expenses and the time required to clean oily ink and glue-based
colors from the copperplates between each impression make this method
of color printing expensive and labor-intensive for no aesthetic
gain, for it creates prints without any visual differences (other
than the telltale signs of double printing) from those produced
with single pulls at far less effort and cost.
But one need not argue the point hypothetically about labor, time,
money, and materials, or even about the astonishing absence of fuzzy
impressions, ghost texts, and embossed haloes unavoidable in two-pull
printing. To this negative evidence that argues against the two-pull
hypothesis we can add a wealth of positive evidence that Blake
did not wipe his plates of ink or color between pulls but continued
to replenish the ink and colors. Printmakers are led by the physical
properties of their materials to replenish ink instead of wiping
and starting over again because
ink transfers best once the plate is worked up. The repetition of
inking accidentals and colors in sequentially pulled prints, such
as the two proof impressions of The Book of Urizen plate
25, color printed but not finished in watercolors (illus.
29-30), or the finished impressions of plate 24 in copies F and
C (illus. 31-32), demonstrates that Blake printed more than one
impression from an inked plate and added ink and colors to a pre-existing
base.
[15] To
assume otherwise is to assume that repetition of colors and their
placement was due to Blake trying to replicate the previous impression—i.e.,
reproducing a model—but, given the differences introduced, doing
a very poor job of it. Clearly, it is more reasonable to conclude
that the repetition of accidentals is due to Blake not wiping
the plate clean between impressions than to conclude that he minutely
copied irrelevant and even visually disruptive droplets and smudges
of ink or color, using the prior impression as his model. The repetition
of colors, and in some cases their diminishing intensity because
Blake did not add more color for a second impression, lead to the
same conclusion. Even the impression of Nurses Song
that was printed twice, the very grounds for the two-pull hypothesis
and for thinking that text and illustration were printed separately,
shows two top plate borders in yellow ochre ink (illus. 33), which
means that ink was printed with the colors and not wiped between
pulls.
While one would expect to see fuzzy impressions and other signs
of misregistration in two-pull printing, what one would not expect
to see are perfectly clean fine white lines bordering the relief
areas of prints color printed from both levels. For example, in
illustrations 25,
29, 30,
31, 32,
the fine white lines between the colors printed from the shallows
and the ink printed from
the relief surfaces are created by printing pressure that was insufficient
to force the paper
onto the escarpments between the etched valleys and the relief plateaus
of the copperplate. Thus, the paper could not pick up any ink or
color from those bordering escarpments. We see precisely the same
effect in monochrome, ink-only prints, which no one doubts were
printed in one pull, such as Europe copy H plates 1 and 4
(illus. 34a, 35). In these impressions, the inking dabber accidentally
inked the
shallows along with the relief areas, and both were printed simultaneously.
The fine white lines between relief and recessed areas were created
either by the dabber not depositing any ink on the escarpments or
by the paper not creasing at an angle sharp enough to pick up any
ink from those escarpments, in spite of relatively heavy printing
pressure. The effect in plate 1 of Europe copy H (illus.
34a) become clearly evident when compared with an impression of
the same plate which lacks the accidental deposits of ink in the
etched shallows (illus. 34b).
The white line in the branches of plate 1 of The Book of Urizen
copy D is most telling (illus. 36) ;
here we can actually see Blake painting the plate, applying
his green color on the inked relief lines and the green spilling
over and touching the shallows on both sides of the line,
creating white spaces between color and branches. If plates with
colors from the shallows were printed twice, then the white line
would be uniformly intersected with color. These white lines could
not be perfectly aligned, even if registration of the plate was
absolutely perfect, because the dampened paper, as Hayter and others
have pointed out, would have minutely changed its shape while being
passed through the press, even if printed with light pressure. This
makes perfect registration of the white-line escarpments of the
second pull impossible—and detection under magnification or computer
enhancement possible.
Accidental flaws in one-pull printing can be mistaken as evidence
of two-pull printing. That such accidentals appear in Blake’s monochrome
impressions, unquestionably printed only
once, should be sufficient warning against misinterpreting their
mode of production. For example, the droplets of color in the margins
of plate 24 in The Book of Urizen copies C and F (illus.
37-38), which may lead one to suspect the edge of a second plate,
is an effect also present in monochrome impressions, such as America
copy H plate 10 and Europe copy H plate 1 (illus. 39-40)
that were assuredly printed just once. One-pull prints can even
exhibit the slight fuzziness, so typical of multi-plate and multi-pull
printing, at the margins between printed and unprinted surfaces
because of slippage between paper and plate when run through the
press. Color printing, particularly when done from the shallows
as well as
the relief areas, multiplies
the chances for accidental deposits of ink and colors that do not
contribute to the printed image, calligraphic or pictorial. Thus
it should be no surprise that Blake’s color prints show, on average,
more accidental effects than monochrome impressions.
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