To give you a better idea of how illuminated printing worked, here are a series of photos taken
by Todd Weinstein in 1979 in the New York studio
of Blakean scholar Joseph Viscomi. They were part
of Viscomi’s attempt at preparing, executing, and
printing a relief-etched facsimile of plate 10 from
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790). Blake wrote
little about his technique, so his process is not
exactly known. Few of his plates survive. Tragically,
they were mainly sold for scrap metal after his
death. Scholars such as Viscomi have managed to
A
reverse-engineer the process and they think it went
something like this.
B
From the Heart of Los’ Forge:
Preparing the Metal
Photography by Todd Weinstein (Collection of Joseph Viscomi. Copyright © 2009 the William Blake Archive.)
In Blake’s psycho-mythology, his inner poet/
creative man was named Los (likely “Sol” spelled
backward). Los is a blacksmith, and given the
preparations required to create the plates that
Blake worked on, it’s not hard to see how he would
have made the connection between this prep work
and the roots of his creations, both literally and
figuratively. Copper sheets had to be hammered
and cut into smaller plates, planed, washed, oiled,
and polished.
C
D
Raising Up His Voice:
Painting the Text and Art
Fig. A: Copper plates were hammered, chiseled, and split
to size, then polished with charcoal, pumice, oil, and
water to create a smooth working surface. Fig. B: Stop-out varnish mixed with lampblack made an acid-resistant
“ink” for creating the artwork on the copper plates.
Fig. C: Blake could compose his work, in mirror images,
right onto the copper plates. Fig. D: Blake would build
a vessel of wax around the plate and constantly stir the
acid like a cauldron brew.
Once the plate was prepared, Blake painted the text
and artwork onto the copper surface with quills
and brushes, using an “impervious fluid” that would
resist the acid to which the plate would then be
subjected. For this, he used “stop-out,” an asphalt-based varnish found in traditional engraving, used
to cover already-etched lines to prevent them
from being further “bitten” into during successive
etchant baths. With the image painted onto the copper with imper-
Because the designs would be transferred onto vious liquid, Blake would then create a dike around
paper in an engraver’s press, the art and text all had the outside edges of the plate with walls of soft wax.
to be painted in reverse. While Blake was already This allowed him to pour a bath of “aqua fortis”
used to reverse composition in engraving, he raised (nitric acid) onto its surface. As the corrosive acid
free-form mirror writing and mirror painting to an bit into the exposed metal, Blake would hover over
art form in itself. (For a man who believed it was a the plates like some Shakespearean witch, using a
mission for each of us in life to do everything in our big bird feather to keep the acid agitated and to stir
power to keep our minds awake, our imaginations away bubbles that formed.
expansive, and to look at things from multiple points The process, with its noxious fumes, was not a
of view, conceiving and visualizing everything backward must have been a great “mind hack” in support
of this worldview.)
“Melting the Metals into Living Fluids”:
Etching
Make: 59
