1889 engraved resin Harpers woodcut

[steve B]

The dot patterns showing in the closeup would lead me to think that a mask of some sort was printed onto a plate that was then etched and the resin items were cast from that. There's a few other ways of doing it, but that's the easiest way to make a number of them. If the lines are very deep then it may have been done some other way.

Laser engraving wouldn't typically show the dot pattern unless you wanted it to. And the actual woodcut woudn't have it at all.

Detailed woodcuts were usually done on maple endgrain. The parts cut away don't print, so the depth of cut isn't important. (It is in engraving, the process used for most US stamps well into the 1970's. )

I've tried a couple woodcuts from my carpentry scraps, the material is great to work with. Making something come out really nice is quite challenging though and whoever did the Harpers stuff was very impressive.

Steve B