28 
House & Garde 
rimeter for a coarse grain, and about double 
the number for a quite fine grain. The 
rocker is held perpendicularly on the plate; 
as it is rocked to and fro the teeth are 
pressed into the copper. This rocking of 
the plate is done first perpendicularly, then 
horizontally, and after that in diagonal 
lines, till., the complete surface is evenly 
roughened. A well-rocked plate, if at this 
stage it be inked and printed, should impart 
to the paper an even, deep, velvety black¬ 
ness. The plate thus prepared is worked 
with the mezzotint scraper, a steel instru¬ 
ment shaped like a penknife, with which all 
those places intended to remain light in the 
print are scraped smooth. The places from 
^vhich the burr or roughness is completely 
removed give the highest lights; those left 
untouched produce the deepest shadows; 
while intennediary tones are obtained by a 
greater or less degree of scraping. Mezzo¬ 
tint, in its procedure, is quite opposite to 
line engraving; the mezzotinter works from 
dark to light, the engraver [and the 
Portrait of Jonathan Belcher, 
governor of Massachusetts, 
1681 - 1757 . An early mezzo¬ 
tint of great interest. From 
the Miinn Collection 
sake of convenience and by rea¬ 
son of its clarity: “The plate of 
a mezzotint,” says he, “before the 
engraver’s work begins, must have 
its whole surface roughened or 
rocked. This is done by means 
of a rocker, a steel instrument 
ending in a curved edge and fast¬ 
ened in a strong handle. The 
edge is extremely fine, with sharp 
teeth. The engraver uses a 
rocker with teeth set wide or 
close, in accordance as he wishes 
his roughened surface to be 
coarse or fine, with a coarse or 
fine grain. The tool has about 
fifty teeth to each inch of its pe- 
The earliest engraved portrait 
of Washington, probably done 
by C. W. Peale in 1778 . From 
the collection of Charles A. 
Munn, Esq. 
etcher] from light to dark.” 
Passing on to the actual print¬ 
ing, Lippmann says: 
“The process of mezzotint is 
entirely without lines, and de¬ 
pends on the flat tones of light 
and shade melting softly into one 
another. A mezzotint plate is 
printed in exactly the same way 
as a line engraving. If an im¬ 
pression from a mezzotint plate 
be closely examined, the marks 
of the rocker can be clearly dis¬ 
tinguished, especially in the half¬ 
tones, as chisel-shaped cuts, form¬ 
ing an appearance of crosses.” 
{Continued on page 58) 
"The Pet”, engraved in mezzotint for Peterson’s Magazine 
by John Sartain from the painting by Landseer 
The Duke of Bedford, after the painting by Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, engraved in 1778 by Valentine Green 
