20 



Processes and Schools of Engraving. 



triple cutting blade (fig. 6). The scraper is also used in all the intaglio 

 processes for correction. The surface of the plate can be cut away to 

 the bottom of the furrow or furrows wrongly engraved ; the surface 



Fig. 6.— The Scraper. 



brought level again by hammering the back of the plate, and polished 

 by means of the hurnislier. The burnisher, an instrument of an oval 

 section with a rounded and highly-polished edge (fig. 7), may also be 

 used for removing shallow lines, by rubbing down the sm^face. 



Fig. 7.— The Burnisher. 



Niello. — The process of niello, a branch of the goldsmith's work 

 chiefly practised in the second half of the XVth century, may be 

 described here on account of its close relation to line-engraving (see 

 also pjp. 21, 22). The niello was a small metal plate (generally of silver, 

 sometimes of gold) in which the lines, cut as in line-engraving, were 

 filled with a black substance (nigellum, niello), formed of a composition 

 of lead, silver, copper and sulphur. Powdered niello was laid on the 

 surface, melted by the application of heat, and so fused into the lines. 

 After the composition had cooled, the surface would be burnished, and 

 the design appear in black on a bright polished ground. The aim of a 

 niello is not a print, but the use of the plate itself as decoration, and the 

 rare impressions known from nielli proper are only the proofs taken by 

 the goldsmiths as records of then work. They also took sulphur casts 

 of the niello-plates, and may have rubbed their proofs from these rather 

 than from the original silver. Apart from that possible use, the sulphur 

 casts filled with ink show up the work with even greater brilliance than 

 an impression on paper, and they may on that account have been made 

 for their own sake. 



History. 



Engraving on metal as a means of decoration was a branch of the 

 goldsmith's craft constantly practised in antiquity and the Middle Ages ; 

 but it was not done for the purpose of printing on paper until the first 

 part of the XVth century. The earliest date on any prints in line- 

 engraving is that of 1446 on one of a series of the Passion of Christ 

 preserved of Berlin (the Master of 1446). But some at least of the work 

 of another anonymous engraver, known from his most extensive work, as 

 the Master of the Playing Cards, certainly preceded this date, possibly 

 by as much as a decade. From his style he is generally located in Upper 

 Gei-many. The earliest engravers of Germany and the Netherlands have 

 for the most part been distinguished for convenience by the dates found 

 on their work, or the name of their principal productions. We may 

 mention : 



