The Patience of a Saint

 

The first thing to say is that this is from Judaeo-Christian linguistic culture.

The most obviously patient Biblical character is Job - see the Epistle of St James in the New Testament, ch 5 v 11

Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job.

In the Old Testament, Job's faith is tested by the loss of everything he has, but he never loses his faith, and patience sees him through.

The phrase 'the patience of the saints' appears twice in the book of Revelation in the New Testament, referencing endurance under persecution, and this is most likely what we think of when we use this phrase. Note that the phrase 'the patience of a saint' implies that patience is a virtue applicable to all and any of the saints, an essential virtue of sainthood if you like.

Most likely this is a case of what is easier to say - 'the patience of a saint' rolls off the tongue more easily than 'the patience of the saints', even though the latter sounds more impressive.

There may be instances where saints have given way to impatience. Perhaps Saint Nicholas giving coal instead of toys to naughty children. Perhaps St Francis getting so fed up with being ignored by people that he goes off and preaches to birds. But the most impatient of the lot, way above the saints, has to be God - that story of the flood is about someone just losing it in a big, big way.

Seamstress

There are a number of interesting directions here, the word itself, the suffix –ess, and the disappearance of sewing terms, particularly with a supposed association to the female gender.

‘Seamstress’ would indicate that there was a male counterpart, a seamster, but this word seems to have disappeared. It is of course dangerous to say that a word has disappeared – you offer yourself as a hostage to fortune. The words ‘furlough’ and ‘catafalque’ could reasonably have been expected to be lost long ago, but re-emerged in recent years.

 

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the frequency of use of 'seamstress' is currently at its highest since 1750, but that may be just because of more documentation, from more printed sources.

 

'Seamster' was around pre Norman Conquest, so it is Old English, but is fading a bit from its highpoint 1860-1880.

 

Both of these are from ‘seam’ meaning the join between two pieces of cloth, two bones in the cranium, or two planks, again used in the Old English period, before 1100, and a common Germanic word – there are similar forms in Danish, Swedish and German – and  a core form can be traced back thousands of years.

 

If 'seamstress' is disappearing it may be to do with two reasons, the general loss of the culture of sewing, and the –ess suffix.

 

Though the word ‘haberdashery’ sounds Victorian and old-fashioned, there is still a haberdashery department at John Lewis stores, where you go to get needles, thread, zips, and so on. There used to be haberdashers and upholsterers and milliners on most high streets, but now they are mostly sewing supply stores, furniture repairers, and hatmakers. Haberdashery is of uncertain origin, upholstery has been to do with the idea of working with cloth since the 16^th century, and a milliner from the 16^th century again sold hats and women’s fancy goods from Milan.

 

These words did not carry female connotations, though some words to do with clothworking and sewing did. ‘On the distaff side’ – a distaff being the stick used for winding newly twisted wool onto – meant on the female line of a family. A fairly recent invention.

 

‘Seamstress’ is clearly declaring its female credentials. The –ess suffix derives from Latin, and is one of the last relics of gender in English nouns. Fifty years ago you would hear women being given the terms authoress, bus conductress, laundress, lecturess, sculptress, even Jewess. Why on earth the selectivity I don’t know. I would say that you didn’t have teacheress or doctoress, but both these forms are documented in the OED, ‘doctoress’ as recently as 2006. Spellcheck balks at only two of the above terms. We still have the term ‘actress’, sometimes used by female actors. There is an absurdity about this. We have a lioness, and a leopardess, and a tigress, but not a pantheress (oh yes we do, says the OED) or a lynxess. We still have hostess and sorceress and heiress and empress. It adds to the wonderful unpredictability of language.

 

As my son pointed out ‘seamstress’ is as daft as calling a female truck-driver in the USA a teamstress. But that would be being a hostage to fortune again.

Joystick and Cockpit

The latest enquiry via BBC local radio in Coventry (28 July 23) concerns two early aviation terms.

The most curious aspect of this is that they come to be used for aviation within a year of each other, according to available documentation. The earliest documented use of ‘joy stick’ is as slang for a baseball bat, in 1908, but according to a diary entry of 1910 (appearing in print in 1935), it is in use for the multidirectional pivoting lever that controls the ailerons and rudder of a plane.

 

The mechanism that the joystick superseded was the ‘cloche’, invented by Bleriot, which had a similar pivoting lever, at the base of which was a metal hemisphere, open side downwards, from the edge of which, at four opposing points, were connected the wires which controlled the movements of the ailerons and rudder. Cloche, being the French for bell – think of a hotel counter bell.

 

Cockpit was a much older word, appearing in 1556 as the arena for cock-fighting (‘arena’ meaning ‘sand’, takes that etymology back to Roman amphitheatres). Within two years it was being used metaphorically, for the site of battles or campaigns; and by the end of the century Shakespeare used it as a metaphor for a theatre, in Henry V, perhaps developing the military connotation.

 

Later metaphorical/physical usages included the business area of Whitehall government and the more crowded part of a ship. By 1904 the word was being applied to the driver’s compartment of a racing car, from which it was an easy progression to the same area on a biplane or monoplane, in 1909.

Neither term seems to have made it into phrasebooks in use in the First World War until 1917, arguing a strong American English influence. The earliest use I have found is in Termes D'Aviation / Glossary of Aviation Terms published in New York in 1917, which gives 'joystick' as 'manche a balai', and 'cockpit' as 'carlingue'.

Of course, both words have slang usages, conveniently apportioned to male and female body parts.

 

All dates from the OED.

Is 'spew' a rude word, and if so, why?

Can you have too many books as a child? I grew up in a household with many books but few that I chose myself – which may explain why I favoured those few that did not come heralded with heavy parental recommendations, but as presents from distant relations or family friends. One of these was the Ladybird book What to Look for in Autumn (1959), by E L Grant Watson, with illustrations by C F Tunnicliffe, which I read often, the illustrations becoming fixed in my memory. Only many years later I read the other books in the series, including What to Look for in Winter, which currently sits in a place where it is certain to be opened, more or less daily.

In describing yew berries, Watson talks about them being eaten by thrushes and blackbirds, which ‘usually spew them up again. If you look near yew trees, you will see their spewings’.

The Oxford English Dictionary currently describes the word ‘spew’ as ‘Not now in polite use’. It was once polite enough to feature in the King James Bible, in four locations, notably the well-known ‘because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth’, in the Revelation of St John, and the lesser known, but more generally relevant ‘Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more’, in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah.

In passing, as an indication of how polite the word once was, the OED cites Alexander Pope’s Epistle to the Earl of Burlington (1731).  

The rich Buffet well-colour'd Serpents grace, 

And gaping Tritons spew to wash your Face.

Lucky Earl of Burlington.

Farmer and Henley’s Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present (1905) offers only the obscene application of the term, and only in the spelling ‘spew’, with no indication that the word in the sense of vomiting was dubious. H C Wyld’s The Universal Dictionary of the English Language (first published in 1931) had no concerns regarding acceptability, offering the definitions 1 To vomit. 2 (of gun) To sink at the muzzle after too quick firing. And as a transitive verb To vomit up, eject. 

There are two questions here, first regarding its degree of impoliteness, and second regarding spelling. The term does not feature in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, but seems now to sit at the edge of acceptability. When did it start to become dodgy? Presumably some time after 1960.

The spelling ‘spue’ emerged during the Middle English period, but according to the OED faded in the 19th century, while the –ew spelling survived throughout from the ninth century to the present.

Nathan Bailey’s An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1730 edition) gives only ‘spew’, as does the abbreviated edition of Johnson’s dictionary (1788). Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language (1852 edition) gives ‘spew’, and though Webster did change his mind about spellings, this was the spelling used in the first edition, of 1828, and further back in his The American spelling book: containing the rudiments of the English language : for the use of schools in the United States, of 1809. 

Nuttall’s Standard Dictionary of 1926 gives only ‘spew’, but Wyld’s Universal Dictionary gives two spellings – spew and spue; these two spellings were offered also in the 1980 edition of The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary. The current online OED gives only ‘spew’. 

The dictionaries seem to have preferred the spelling ‘spew’ alone up till around 1930, and dropped ‘spue’ after 1980, which roughly coincides with the point at which the word came to be deemed impolite. Is a connection fanciful? Does the spelling ‘spew’ somehow mimic the sound of the action more closely than ‘spue’, and thus render the whole thing unpleasant? Do analogous spellings help? Flue, glue, blue, true, are completely neutral, contrasted with chew, threw, blew, flew, and the possibility of graphically physical associations. These are selected to make an entirely unscientific point, but another approach might be more fruitful. Given the choice of two spellings in the two sentences following, which spelling looks more appropriate, ‘spued’ or ‘spewed’?

The animal …. its guts out on the ground.

The locomotive …. fire and sparks out onto the track.

It is noticeable too that in the scientific citations from after 1800 given in the OED the spelling ‘spue’ strongly outnumbers the spelling ‘spew’. 

All of these are tiny influences, but tiny influences can have strong effects in language change. After a conversation with friends regarding whether ‘-ize’ or ‘–ise’ is preferable, it is clear that the slightest thought that ‘-ize’ might be an Americanism turns out to be an absolute decider. No matter that the spelling may have originated in the British Isles.

Gone West, and other places

Over the winter of 1914/15 there was in The Times letters page a correspondence concerning the origin of the phrase ‘gone west’. The question ‘Does any one know the origin or meaning of the soldiers' curious phrase for death, ‘Going West’?’, posed on New Year’s Eve, firmly placed the phrase as one that was associated with, and possibly originated by, soldiers, the association continuing at the beginning of Israel Gollancz’s answer, published on 8 January. Gollancz, at the time Professor of English Language and Literature at King’s College London, and a Shakespeare scholar, quoted in his letter lines from a poem from the time of Chaucer:

Women and mony wilsome wy

As wynd and wattir ar gone west

(Women and many a good man

Like wind and water are gone west)

Gollancz’s letter leads down a path linking going west to travelling clockwise and its association with luck, as opposed to travelling widdershins; but more usefully mentions the wide association with the setting sun. But there are also regional origins supposed – including the idea of the condemned felon’s trip from London’s Newgate Prison westwards to the gallows at Tyburn. While the poem is identified as either originating in the West Midlands, or heavily influenced by the dialect of that area, Gollancz also questions whether the phrase was being used more by soldiers from particular areas of the British Isles – Scotland, Ireland or the West of England – noting that a previous correspondent had heard the phrase used by soldiers from Munster, the south-west of Ireland. All of these areas may be seen as having Celtic cultural influences (though what this actually means is difficult to determine), which links to the current definition of ‘gone west’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The sense became widespread during the First World War (1914–18). The relationship between quot. a1532[the poem quoted by Gollancz]  and the later evidence has not been firmly established. Apparently ultimately with reference to the west as the place of the setting sun and perhaps also to its identification (esp. in Celtic traditions) as the abode of the dead. 

The idea of a connection between death and the setting sun continued to be referred to by people fascinated by the phrase during the war, bringing references to other potential sources: the ‘Miscellany’ writer for the Manchester Guardian 25 September 1917 wrote that he had discovered the Chinese phrase hui-hsi, meaning ‘returned west’, or ‘gone to heaven’. The connection seems so natural that it perhaps needs to be pointed out that it is not universal; when Homer’s Odysseus decides to visit the land of the dead he is driven by a wind taking him southwards; and current American slang proposes ideas and processes that fail as having ‘gone south’.

Equally though it is worth wondering why its colloquial use early in the First World War had such a strong take-up. It is notable that the phrase does not appear in Farmer and Henley’s 1905 edition of A Dictionary of Slang and Colloquial Usage; Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937) dates its popularization to the First World War, but notes the general idea appearing centuries earlier in English with the reference to the journey to Tyburn. Partridge believed this to be ‘the operative origin of the phrase’ but extended the referential field widely, noting associations he described as romantic, that connected the setting sun to the end of life, quoting a Greek proverb that translates as ‘life draws towards its evening, the west, the setting sun’. Partridge's trajectory of the phrase through five centuries cemented the link to death, from the 15th century to the 16th (‘55 women … are gone west’ [sadly with no reference but possibly a reference to religious or superstitious persecutions]), through the penal irony of the 17th and 18th, to a revival in America in the 19th with associations of the failure of many pioneering adventures; and finally to the cynicism of the trenches in Flanders. It must be said that Partridge ends this chapter of Words! Words! Words! (1933) with uncharacteristic emotion – ‘too many of our friends and our people meet their death like a gallant sun dipping over the western horizon that a better day might be born’. Perhaps the present tense use of ‘meet’ indicates the ongoing nature of the mental experience, but it is rather different in tone from the soldiers’ related terms offered on the same page – ‘pushing up the daisies’ and ‘copping a packet’.
 

Lockdown art from art

When we look back at the popular cultural practices prevalent during the lockdown period the home tableau reproduction of famous paintings will stand out as among the most creative, witty and challenging. As an art practice it is not new, and has become a part of how we engage with visual culture, a kind of homage through imitation, representation being the major theme of Western art for several centuries. However, the particular aspect of the present practice is the choice of items used, enforced by lockdown - we dress up using the items to hand, we use modern processed food and domestic items to imitate the seventeenth-century still-life and the fifteenth-century portrait, we sometimes go for deliberately bad imitation, using references of shape and colour but not the status of the object. We have fun with it, but we take it seriously. It is widespread enough and sufficient creativity is employed to make it worth asking some questions:

Is it more than just fun?

Why do people put so much work into it?

What is its relation to the selfie?

What governs which paintings people choose?

What does it tell us about how we locate ourselves culturally?

What does it tell us about how we evaluate particular art objects?

Does it have anything to do with not being able to visit art galleries? In fact, what would we find if we asked an individual or a group creating a live tableau reproduction of a famous painting, ‘when did you, or were you last able to, last see that painting in real life?’

Is this being done with any art that is not found in major galleries of western 2D art?

What do the people doing it get out of it? Is it competitive, and if so, how is success or failure judged?

While it may be proposed that what makes people do this is a mixture of boredom, fun, and following a wave (imitation of imitation, or indeed in terms of representational art, imitation of imitation of imitation), the over-riding questions that may provide the most fruitful thinking are ‘why these objects?’ and ‘what do we want from it?’

There is an undeniable sense of wit and ingenuity involved in the hockey-stick used in place of the staff of office, the dog standing in for the infant Christ, the garden chair used in place of Venus’ shell in the Botticelli painting, the saucepan and earphones used in place of headware. These replacements do not represent, for the saucepan does not represent the hat, it pushes it aside, it debases, domesticises and mocks the original, at the same time as acknowledging its importance. It uses similarities of colour and form to downgrade the original without upgrading the replacement; it resonates and represents while speaking its own difference. Despite the longevity of the portrait, it addresses the original with the challenge of similarity: in the current circumstances it says ‘for all your finery you are as mortal and as fragile as we are’.

What governs the choice of paintings? This presumably includes the point that the picture may be a favourite, may be easily reproducible, the subject may resemble the person or people, there may be sudden flashes of similarity between a prop in the painting and an item in the person’s home, or the idea of the challenge may give rise to absurd incongruities, such as the saucepan on the head. And why famous works of Western representative art? Is it because they are unchallengeable? They have already been turned into scarves,ties, tea-towels, food-trays, wrapping-paper, so why should representing them with ourselves be any different? Or are we saying, this is who we are, how we choose to be represented for our seconds of fame, as we hope to go viral?

A structure for this was provided by the Getty Museum, as reported by John Crace in The Guardian6 April 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/apr/06/how-i-became-the-duke-of-urbino-getty-museum-recreate-masterpiecebut the blog acknowledged that this was a case of major art institutions catching something that was happening already, in itself noteworthy. A major art institution appropriating something that might be seen as mocking high art could devalue any mockery, and announce, ‘this we can take, because we are unassailable, and this gentle mummery highlights the superiority of high art’. The Getty Museum blog labels the activity ‘recreating’, and recreation it is – the practice is directed towards fun rather than art, the offerings are described as ‘creative interpretations of iconic artworks’ and ‘ingenious and hilarious’https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/getty-artworks-recreated-with-household-items-by-creative-geniuses-the-world-over/ Despite the status of Arcimboldo’s imitations of portraiture using fruit and vegetables, despite Sturtevant’s work using reconstruction from memory, despite the prescient work of Nina Katchadourian http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/photography/sa-flemish.phpand Hendrik Kerstens https://www.ifitshipitshere.com/with-his-daughter-as-muse-photographer-hendrik-kerstens-emulates-flemish-paintings/, they are not ‘art’. 

At art school I collaged myself into photocopies of famous paintings (scalpel and glue in those days) for a laugh, and later made serious work using recreative photography to understand through recreating an eighteenth-century family portrait. I have thought about recreating a painting and seeing what my ingenuity might achieve. But I would be more tempted to recreate with domestic objects cultural artefacts that are found beyond the National Gallery, a Sepik River mask from Papua New Guinea, an Indonesian shadow puppet, or an Ice Age sculpture; Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Weddingin the National Gallery in London is part of what made me me, but I would want to go beyond affirming the worth of western visual mimesis. However, stepping outside western art would be cultural appropriation taken into a frame of digital competence, the wit, ingenuity and mockery suddenly becoming uncomfortable. Would I dare to dress up (undress up rather) as the Willendorf Venus, as the statuette of Zeus hurling a thunderbolt, or downgrade into something from British folk-art – a toby-jug, a flatback Staffordshire pottery figure? Now the wit becomes self-mockery, pointless, missing the joke, and pointing out that it is primarily a joke.

As we examine the choices being made we see the boundaries that are implicit, and how they turn us inwards; Western art being played with by western people (and if you look at the reporting of this activity on https://www.businessinsider.com/at-home-recreations-of-famous-artwork-during-coronavirus-quarantine-2020-4?r=US&IR=T#-to-edvard-munchs-the-scream-from-1893-on-toast-12and the Getty’s own selection, as on 16 May 2020, what do you notice about the skin colour of the participants?) A lockdown within the lockdown.   

William Blake and mixed etching and engraving techniques

As is well known to Blake students, the artist was apprenticed to an engraver in his mid-teens and maintained a career as a jobbing engraver, which both gave him an income and introduced him to artists and publishers, some of whom became patrons*. Blake’s engraving work on Hayley’s Life of Cowper, published in 1803, was arduous though the results were far beyond competent; rather than thinking of this as drudgery, Blake was pleased with both the work he did and the standard of printing achieved by his wife Catherine – ‘She does [it] to admiration’. Inspection of the print shows Blake’s skill as an engraver, maintaining the curvature of broken line, and using a line of varying width in cross-hatch for nuances of form and tone. He was working at a time when engraving had reached its apogee, before the introduction of Fielding’s parallel line cutting process rendered engraving mechanistic and flat.

With this in mind it is tempting to assume that Blake kept apart the famous relief etching technique, for his own work, and the engraving, for reproducing the work of others. While visiting the recent Blake exhibition at the Tate Modern, at a time when I have been working with both engraving and etching, I spotted an interesting contrast of technique, and one which touches on a longstanding fascination with the reproduction of cross-hatch in printing.

In the title-plate for Chapter 2 of Jerusalem, which he worked on from 1804 till after 1820, two lovers embrace within the blossom of a flower lying on the surface of a pond; a leaf extends forward to the edge of the picture frame. Blake’s standard process in the work is relief etching, painting varnish onto the surface of the copper, and etching the plate in acid to leave a high flat surface which would take the ink from a brayer for contact printing, which water-colour applied afterwards (it is a process which is generally credited to Blake himself). In this image, in the area to the left of the blossom, below the title, there is an area where white line crosshatch lies on a dark background; to achieve the continuity of line (and from the Cowper portrait we can see how important and achievable this was for Blake) there were two possible processes, either to paint in all the intervening lozenge-shaped spaces, or to cut or scribe through a body area of varnish. Surely the second process would have been the instant choice of an engraver; what we do not know though, is whether the cut lines, registering as white, were done by engraving into the plate or just cutting through the varnish. Given the irregularity of the spacing between the lines it was more likely to be the latter. A few centimetres to the right the shading and form of the figure’s clothing is rendered in black line cross-hatch – in this case it is easy to assume the process here was painting the lines in varnish, so that the lozenge/square spaces in between were removed in the etching process. Just above and to the right other shading methods – dot within lozenge, and parallel line – indicate differences of form, texture and tone, both involving the scribe or graver rather than varnishing brush as the mark-making tool.

The leaf that extends to the foreground also shows a range of techniques: to the left black line cross-hatching, and to the right white line hatching. Except that close inspection brings doubt. On the left the lines do not show a continuous flow; it seems to be a net of lines, but some patches of line are thicker than others for very short distances, while others do not match up at all. Here evidently Blake was making the design by the creation of the white spaces between the lines, but how, and why? It is a technique that was used in woodcuts in the 15^thand 16^thcenturies, and even when Blake started working in wood-engraving in the 1820s he used the by then convention of shading and form though parallel lines rather than cross-hatch. Was he then cutting these, for Blake, irregularly shaped lozenges into the surface with a fine chisel or graver? The right-hand side of the leaf shows a cleaner flow of line, white this time, which would have been straightforward to produce using a soft varnish and a scribing tool. But the central area of the leaf moves, from right to left, from white-line cross-hatch to black-line cross-hatch, with a clear demarcation line where the lozenges change from black to white, and on to white-line parallel lines approaching the central vein of the leaf. Such design choices in such a small area show a mind thinking in advance of the moving scribing tool or graver, creating small areas of detail that indicate Blake working as thoroughly on the detail of composition as on the broad sweep of his spiritual cosmography.

*Proof of how Blake was influenced by the material he worked on as a jobbing engraver can be seen in the poem 'The Fly' in Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake supplied engravings for Joseph Ritson's A Select Collection of English Songs (1783), one of which, a drinking song ‘Made extempore by a Gentleman, occasion’d by a Fly drinking out of his Cup of Ale’, supplied Blake with both theme and sentiment. 

The Comparative Etymology of Printmaking

What can be drawn from the etymologies of words to do with relief and intaglio printmaking? It has become noticeable to me through comparative study of the interweaving histories of the distinct methods of making prints that some methods and prints carry more cachet than others. Can etymology throw any light on the process? This was brought into focus by my coming across in …. The etymology of ‘cliché’ as the metal imprint of a wood-engraving used for stereotyping, a quick method of producing a large number of printing matrices in order to print on a number of presses simultaneously.

A list of etymologies, mainly using the Online Etymology Dictionary etymonline.com, which I have found to be reliable, and the Oxford English Dictionary. 

Print – to print, meaning to make a mark from an impression, as from a seal, is c 1350 prenten, from Old French (from which it goes into various Germanic languages); the use of prenten for ‘to set a mark on a surface’ is from the late 1300s. Caxton used enprynte for his products in 1474. ‘A print’ is from early 1600s. The source is Old French preinte, from Latin premere.

Press – Presse is found in English from c1300 presumably for a clothes press, from French via Latin pressare. But late Old English also had press for a clothes press. 

Relief – about 1600, from the French relief, from Italian rilievo ‘something raised’, from Latin relevare ‘to raise’.

Woodcut – ‘wood’ is from Old English wudu meaning ‘tree, trees, forest, the substance of wood’, from conjectural proto-Germanic widu. 

‘Cut’ is from about 1300, presumed to be from Old English non-attested cyttan. Or possibly from Scandinavian sources, via conjectural North Germanic kut (non-attested), which is the source of Swedish dialectal kuta ‘to cut’,  kuta ‘knife’, and Old Norse kuti ‘knife’; alternatively from Old French couteau ‘knife’.

Wood engraving (and engrave) – ‘engrave’ is mid 1400s, either based on French engraver, or from ‘to grave’, from the Old English grafan ‘to dig, carve’, the source of the noun ‘grave’. Similar words in Dutch, German, Gothic, and Old Norse argue a proto-Germanic grabanan (non-attested). The French engraver, according to Dauzat (Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, Albert Dauzat, 1954) derives from the Frankish non-attested graben.

Copper – The late Old English coper was from Proto-Germanic unattested kupar (giving Middle Dutch koper, Old Norse koparr, Old High German kupfar), but these came into Germanic from coprum a variant Latin form of the Classical Latin Cyprium aes ‘Cyprian metal’.  

Etch – in English from 1630s, from Dutch etsen (and NB the common etch for copper is still called ‘Dutch mordant’, ‘mordant’ meaning ‘biting’, from Old French mordant ‘biting’, from Latin mordere ‘to bite, sting’); this is from the German ätzen ‘to etch’, from Old High German azzon ‘give to eat; cause to bite, feed’, which is from the non-attested Proto-Germanic atjanan ‘to make eat’, itself from etanan ‘eat’, from the Indo-European root ed ‘eat’. 

Drypoint –  ‘Dry’ is from Middle English drie from Old English dryge, from Proto-Germanic non-attested draugiz, the source of Middle Low German dröge, Middle Dutch druge, Dutch droog, Old High German trucchon, German trocken, Old Norse draugr); the  Germanic root is the non-attested dreug ‘dry’.

‘Point’ is in Middle English, from the Latin punctum meaning ‘small hole made by pricking’, which developed to include any small dot. Punctum developed into Old French point ‘dot, smallest amount’ which was adopted into Middle English by about 1300. Another, reinforcing, source was the Latin pungere ‘to prick, pierce’ gave puncta, Medieval Latin for ‘a sharp tip’, which developed into Old French pointe ‘point of a weapon, vanguard of an army’, which passed into English in the 1300s. The OED’s citation for the sharp point of a tool, for the point of a compass, is 1392, but there are earlier 14^thcentury citations for needles and swords.

Intaglio – This is Italian, coming into English about 1660, from the word for engraved or incised work, from intagliare ‘to cut in, engrave’.

Pull – Old English pullian ‘to pluck off, to draw out’, is of unknown origin, but perhaps related to Low German pulen ‘to remove the shell or husk’, Frisian pûlje ‘to shell peas, husk’, Middle Dutch polen ‘to peel, strip’, and Icelandic pula ‘to work hard’, Middle Dutch pōlen ‘to shell (peas, etc.)’, West Frisian piele ‘to tinker, fiddle, potter’. The OED admits that the etymology is uncertain, and the range of applications in northern Germanic languages is very, sometimes startlingly wide, but the source is clearly Germanic.

Turn – Late Old English turnian ‘to rotate, revolve’ was reinforced in Middle English by Old French torner ‘to turn away or around; draw aside, cause to turn; change, transform; turn on a lathe’. The source for both was Latin tornare ‘to polish, round off, fashion, turn on a lathe’, from the Latin tornus ‘lathe’, from Greek tornos ‘lathe, compass’; the Indo-European root was tere ‘to rub, turn’. 

Burin – The French burin was cognate with the Italian bolino and borino, Spanish buril, Portuguese buril, and Old Spanish boril; the OED suggests these may come from the Old High German bora ‘boring-tool’, but I think the Romance/Germanic divide raises doubts. The ‘burr’, the curved material lifted off when using the burin, is not related, its curvature, or more likely its sharpness, possibly relating it to Scandinavian words for seed-heads.

Knife – The late Old English cnif was from Old Norse knifr, stemming from Proto-Germanic unattested knibaz (giving Middle Low German knif, Middle Dutch cnijf, and German kneif).

Gouge – Attested in English from the late 1400s, this is from Old French gouge, from the Late Latin gubia, probably of Celtic origin - the OED cites Old Irish gulba‘rostrum’, modern Welsh gylf ‘beak’, and Cornish gilb ‘boring tool’. But the French is related to Spanish gúbia, Portuguese goiva, Italian gubbia, gorbia, all of which are from the late Latin gubia and gulbia in Isidore’s Etymologies. 

Draw – There is a common Germanic model seen in the Old Saxon dragan, Old High German tragen, Old Norse draga, Gothic (ga)dragan; in Old English this is dragan, with the sense, shared with Old Norse, of ‘pull, draw’ – in other languages it means ‘to bear or carry’. The sense of creating an image on a surface is from about 1530.

My longstanding hypothesis is that wood-based printmaking was of a lower status than metal-based printmaking, from the earliest period of printing. Woodcuts were used for pictorial narrative and decorative purposes; engraving was for describing scientific information, and for producing copies of paintings. Durer progressed from primarily wood-based work to primarily metal-engraving. Scientific representation moved from wood-based work to metal-based image-making. Woodcuts provided emblems, while engravings provided representations of specimens. To put it theoretically, copper-plate engraving provided an objective truth, while woodcuts provided a subjective truth. Comparing the woodcuts in Henry Lyte’s Niewe Herball of 1578 with Beatrizet’s moray eel from twenty years earlier, we see the plant laid out as a type of a flower, an idealised form, while the eel is an individual animal. 

Not that engraving did not have to work through artifice. Marc Antonio Raimondi, working in Venice and then Rome at the start of the 16^thcentury, initiated the process of engraving copies of paintings, working from paintings by Raphael and Peruzzi. He created a system of lines based on the linear shading of Durer’s woodcuts and his engravings, which allowed a spatial description of form, which became the standard style for line engraving. Vesalius’ book on Anatomy De humani corporis fabrica, from 1543, included engravings by engravers from the workshop of Titian, where the cut line is used to create space, form, and the direction of muscle simultaneously. Perhaps it is Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) that established without doubt engraving as the visual language of the illustration of science. Hooke was the first to publish a book of images engraved from his drawingsof items seen through both microscope and telescope; the process involved translation through several visual and technological stages. Henry Power’s Experimental philosophy, published in 1664, was distinct in that it used woodcuts. Decades later Hogarth used engraving to disseminate an idea of social truth through his copies of his paintings and his political caricatures. Meanwhile woodcut had become the printmaking method of choice for chapbooks, cheap books for children and the poor. 

How does etymology support this? If we divide the terms above into Latin/French-based and Germanic-based camps, we see the definitely Latin/French include ‘print’, ‘intaglio’ and ‘turn’; the definitely Germanic include ‘press’, ‘wood’, ‘woodcut’, ‘etch’, ‘pull’, ‘knife’, and ‘draw’. ‘Engrave’, ‘copper’, ‘drypoint’ include aspects or transitions through both areas of linguistic influence, while ‘burin’ and ‘gouge’, both tool-words are more widespread in their possible origins. ‘Burin’ feels French though, as does ‘engrave’; their nearest points of contact to English are French. There is a sense in which the words of the delicate – even, referring to the hypothesis, more authoritative – processes – ‘burin’, ‘engrave’, ‘turn’, ‘intaglio’, ‘copper’ (and to this list could be added ‘edition’, ‘signature’, ‘portfolio’) are all Latin and French-based words; while the less delicate processes and materials – ‘etch’, ‘press’, ‘woodcut’, ‘knife’ – are Germanic in origin. 

Can language be used to support the hypothesis? Absolutely, it guides our attitudes – if woodcut were instead called dendrographology we would view it differently; if copperplate engraving were called metal-cut it would be considerably downgraded. 

Isidore of Seville, d 636, was the author of The Etymologies, an encyclopedia based on summaries of what from the classical world the Christian church thought worth preserving. The Vatican considered naming Isidore the patron saint of the internet (this is according to Wikipedia; given the wildness of some of Isidore’s proposals, it is surprising that nobody suggested that it might have been more appropriate to name him as the patron saint of Wikipedia). One section of the vast work deals with etymologies, and through its often erroneous proposals promotes the idea that the deep meaning of a word is embedded in its history. For example, ‘the walking stick (baculus) is said to have been invented by Bacchus, the discoverer of the grape vine, so that people affected by wine might be supported by it.’ Or the idea that the word ‘foetus’ derives from fovere‘to keep warm’.

This is now known as the etymological fallacy and we consider it naïve and misleading. But from the above we see that what a word conveys is not just the thing it signifies; the construction, length and form of the word matters, and these are created by the language and the sociological, cultural and historical environment that formed and were facilitated by that language. A word is not just its meaning – ‘execute’ means the same as ‘behead’, ‘show’ the same as ‘demonstrate’, ‘people’ the same as ‘population’. Their connotations, the back-story and environment they imply are hugely different.

Printmaking workshops at Valentines Mansion, updated

Valentines Mansion print masterclasses

I am reposting this notice for print masterclasses with revisions - mainly incorporating etching and engraving into one workshop.

These workshops are masterclasses because they are based on close examination of original works by major artists – Hogarth, Blake, Nash, Bewick, and others, so that you can see how they used specific printmaking techniques, and then learn how to use those techniques yourself. I trained as a printmaker in the 1980s and have been exploring print history and techniques since then. I teach at the Bishopsgate Institute,  have taught print history at the British Library, and have been a visiting lecturer for Central St Martins and Camberwell College of Art (University of the Arts London) and the Royal College of Arts.

Workshop 1 – Wood engraving

Wood-engraving is a specialist printmaking technique that involves working on the endgrain of the wood; this allows fantastic detail and effects of contrast and white-line design.

We will be making close examination of original prints and books by Thomas Bewick, Paul Nash, Joan Hassall, Claire Leighton and Gertrude Hermes, to see how their techniques created such extraordinarily beautiful works. 

Thomas Bewick trained as a copperplate engraver in the late eighteenth century, before developing the technique of wood-engraving, cutting into the endgrain of hard wood with fine chisels rather than knives or gouges, which opened up the possibility of simultaneous black-line and white-line design, and allowing almost unbelievable detail. While his masterworks, the illustrations for  A General History of Quadrupeds (1790) and A History of British Birds(1797 and 1804) brought a new kind of natural history illustrating to many readers (A History of British Birds is mentioned in Jane Eyre), Bewick is even more appreciated for his tiny vignettes of rural life, often humorous and showing his deep empathy with the natural environment (see above).

The hardness of endgrain printing, as well as allowing fineness of design, increased the potential print run; Bewick’s works ran into many editions, and his blocks can still be used today. Nineteenth-century journalism, such as The Illustrated London News, made extensive use of wood-engraving; we will be looking at how they managed to create large pictures using assembly-line techniques, long before Henry Ford’s car factories.

In the twentieth century wood-engraving became a widely used technique in British book illustration. Private presses such as the Golden Cockerel Press commissioned work by artists such as Robert Gibbings and Gertrude Hermes to create a recognisably English style of book illustration.

We will be using the tools specific to wood engraving - gravers, burins and spitstickers – and learning how to engrave on boxwood and lemonwood using a bench-hook and sandbag. We will be printing by hand, burnishing and using a Victorian hand-press, and, since wood-engraving is so dependent on fine hand-control, we will be examining how to adapt tools to individual requirements. 

All tools and materials supplied.

11-5 -  11 September,  3 November, 2019

£60 per person, maximum number of 3 participants per session.

To book, contact me on julianwalker20@gmail.com

..................

Workshop 2 - Copperplate engraving and etching

Engraving involves carving lines into the surface of the metal plate, sinking the ink into the lines, cleaning off the surface of the plate, and printing onto dampened paper under high pressure. Etching uses the principle of drawing onto a plate, through a resist layer of wax, and then immersing the plate in acid which corrodes the surface of the metal where it has been exposed. We will be using zinc plates, a remarkably accessible safe acid, and beeswax. As the etching takes a while, we will starting with this, and doing some engraving while the plates etch.

There are masses of ways of exploring the process of making marks and texture that can be etched on a plate; we will be looking at sugarlift, masking, and alternatives to aquatint.

Printing from engraved metal plates is recorded from before Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type in the mid-fifteenth century, and by the early sixteenth century the technique was being used in Italy to reproduce the designs of paintings for wider public consumption. Engraving on copper plates for printing, intaglio printing, creates lines into which the ink is pushed; the surface is wiped clean, and damped paper is pressed on under high pressure, picking up the ink from the grooves. Close examination of prints shows the ink sitting proud of the surface, which creates effects very different from the pressed down ink of relief printing. Etching dates from the early sixteenth century, allegedly developed from designs etched on armour.

Copper-plate engraving was the technique of mass-reproduction of images in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the process speeded up by the introduction of the line-engraving machine in the 1820s, which itself brought about a mechanical sense of formulaic image-making, and the superseding of engraving by lithography and wood engraving. Engraving had almost disappeared by 1900, and only a few twentieth century artists, notably Picasso, Vieillard and Edward Bawden, used the technique.

We will be looking at the curious rise and fall of engraving, and examining some original works of some of the masters of engraving, William Hogarth – a fine example of whose work is on show in the Mansion, the great seventeenth century engraver Wenceslaus Hollar, and William Blake, who worked as an engraver, and whose plates were printed by his wife Catherine. 

Copperplate engraving is essentially a line technique, requiring few specialist tools; while mastery of the tools allows great sensitivity, any indentation made on the surface can hold ink – surfaces can be dented, scratched, and distressed in many ways, giving different effects. We will look at mezzotint and have a go at ‘stipple and burnish’ engraving.

We will be learning how to use the tools specific to copperplate engraving – essentially very fine-pointed chisels – and learning how to engrave on zinc using a bench-hook and sandbag, initially using soft metal and then going o to zinc plates. We will be learning the processes of preparing a plate for printing, and taking impressions using a press; and, since copperplate engraving is so dependent on fine hand-control, we will be examining how to adapt tools to individual requirements. 

All tools and materials supplied.

11-5   - 22 September, 15 October, 17 November 2019

£60 per person, maximum number of 3 participants per session.

To book, contact me on julianwalker20@gmail.com 

.............

Workshop 3

I will also be leading a workshop in experimental printmaking, more or less as and when requested. I can run this for 2 or 3 people. We'll be trying out safe etching without acid; various methods of distressing the surface of metal for printing (stipple and sanding, burnishing); working on soft metal; collograph and mixed viscosity printing; alternatives to aquatint; printing over antique printing (18th century); and a few more ideas. It should be fun. More details on the processes can be found on my other blog https://jwalkerwords2.blogspot.com/2019/08/safe-cheap-etching.html

Again, 11-5, £60 per person, contact me to arrange dates.

...........

Bespoke workshops

For two people at a time, using all or any of the above techniques. 

£180 for two people, all materials included. Contact me to arrange a convenient date and your preferences.