386 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



the Museum, is a good, although uiiuor, example of the whole class.* 

 The large white dots observable iu it, as iu most — although, as we shall 

 preseutly see, by no means iu all — of the prints here to be considered, 

 gave rise to the English name " dotted prints," as well as to the French 

 designation, " nianiere criblee," the latter in allusion to "lecrible," 

 the sieve, a utensil which, in its older forms, is made of a piece of sheet- 

 tin perforated by round holes. The German "Schrotblatter" or "ge- 

 schrotene Arbeit," from " schroten," (to grind corn coarsely, to cut or saw 

 rudely) expresses another peculiarity of these prints, the rude way, 

 namely, in which the ground in many of them seems to have been 

 gnawed out rather than cut. In drawing, most of the u dotted prints " 

 are quite primitive, and there is noticeable in them a very marked pre- 

 dilection on the part of their designers or engravers for ornamental 

 backgrounds and accessories. 



Owing to the inartistic character just alluded to, the tendency among 

 the older writers on the subject was to rank these prints among the 

 earliest specimens of the arts of engraving and printing, and to carry 

 their origin back to the beginning of the fifteenth century. At present 

 it is thought, however, that the rudeness of most of the designs is evi- 

 dence of lack of skill in the artists rather than of antiquity, and that it 

 will be safe to assume about the middle of the fifteenth century as the 

 oldest probable date. If this be so, the " mauiere criblee" was quite 

 short-lived, as there is good reason to believe that it was not practiced 

 much beyond the beginning of the sixteenth century. In quantity the 

 " dotted prints" are also quite limited. According to Dr. Willshiret 

 only about three hundred were known fifteen years ago, aud although 

 this number has been added to by new discoveries since then, they are 

 still decidedly rare. Finally, it may be said that most of these prints 

 are of small or medium size, comparatively few only measuring as much 

 as about 10 by 14 inches. 



It would seem from all this as if the prints in question had been given 

 an importance in the history of the multiplying arts and in the appre- 

 ciation of collectors not warranted either by their artistic character 

 or their bulk. It must be conceded, however, that they arc very inter- 

 esting, and no one who has met with them can have failed of having 

 been struck by their unique appearance as compared with all other 

 contemporaneous attempts at producing pictures multipliable in the 

 press. Their most obvious characteristic is that the design is mainly 



* Measurements, through the center, 73 by 106 millimeters. Partly colored red, 

 yellow, and light green; the red, thick aud glossy, as if it had been gummed. The 

 obscurations in the reproduction are due to the coloring. Mr. W. L. Schreiber, of 

 Franzensberg, Germany, to whom I sent a photograph of this print, kindly calls my 

 attention to the fact that it is identical with Weigel's No. 333. See Weigel und Zest- 

 ermann, " Anfange der Druckerkunst," Leipsic, 1866, vol. II, p. 236. 



t "Introduction to the study and collection of ancient prints," 2d ed., Loudon, 

 1877, vol. II, p. 67. 



