Posted By:
hankronThe pictures in 1800s Harper's Weeklies and similar magazines are popular and significant to collectors as they are original prints. The pictures were printed directly from handmade printing plates. The printing plate was made by a full time craftsman who carved or cut the design into a block of wood using hand held tools-- the same way Rembrandt or Pablo Picasso would have done it. If you or your kid ever made a linoleum cut in art class (carving into a piece of linoleum, adding ink then making a print), that is basically how a woodcut is made. Though wood is obviously a tad harder than linoleum. It sometimes took a couple of weeks to make a single printing plate. Though a print was usually done with the colaboration of several people (artist, carver), as opposed to a single famous artist, a Harper's print of the 1869 Cincinnati Reds or 1880s Buck Ewing is as much an original print as the Picasso hanging in a museum .... In fact, one of the Civil War artists who worked for Harper's was a then unknown painter named Homer Winslow.
This is why Harper's Woodcuts are considered more than just newspaper pictures like you might cut out of today's sports section.
Visit the below web page if you wish to get some background on handmade 'relief printing' which is basic class of printing that includes woodcuts, wood-engraving (type of woodcut used to make later Harper's woodcuts) and linoleum printing. Notice the images of a woodcut and a Picasso linoleum cut you can see exactly how the wood or linoleum was carved out. You or your kid can also make a simple relief print in your kitchen with a potato (the pictures show me making one in my kitchen).
http://www.cycleback.com/printsexamination/ten.html
