Wood engraving is a relief printing technique and a close cousin of the woodcut. Like all relief printing, it prints from a raised surface: the artist cuts away the lines and areas that should stay white, inks what is left, and presses it onto paper. What sets wood engraving apart is that the image is cut into the hard end grain of the wood with a fine metal tool called a burin, which allows extraordinarily fine, crisp and detailed lines, far finer than a woodcut can hold.
Wood engraving vs woodcut
The two techniques look similar and are easy to confuse, and for much of the nineteenth century the words were even used interchangeably, but the difference lies in the block and the tools. A woodcut is cut on the side grain, the long plank face of the wood, along the fibres, using knives and gouges; it suits bold shapes and strong, graphic marks. Wood engraving instead uses the end grain, a cross-section sliced from the end of the trunk or branch, which is dense and has no directional grain. Worked with a sharp burin, this hard surface takes hair-thin lines and delicate shading in any direction. In short: a woodcut is bold and carved along the grain, while a wood engraving is fine and engraved into the end grain. Both belong to the same relief printing family.
How a wood engraving is made
- Start with a smooth, polished block of end-grain hardwood, traditionally boxwood, cut to type height so it can also be printed alongside text.
- Engrave the design with a burin and other gravers, cutting away everything that should print white. Because the lines are so fine, the image is usually worked from dark to light.
- Roll a thin, even layer of relief ink over the raised surface with a brayer.
- Print by hand with a baren or, as was traditional, on a press alongside type.
The white-line technique
Because the engraver removes the lines that will stay white, wood engraving is often worked as a white-line image: instead of drawing black marks, the artist effectively draws with light, cutting glowing white lines and textures out of a dark field. Thomas Bewick, who perfected the technique, treated these white incisions as a drawing medium in their own right, building up soft greys and luminous highlights that no woodcut could match.
A short history
Wood engraving was developed in late eighteenth-century England by Thomas Bewick (1753-1828), usually regarded as the founder of the art. His beautifully observed A History of British Birds (1797-1804) showed what the end grain could do. Because the blocks were type-high and could print thousands of near-identical impressions with little wear, wood engraving became the main way of illustrating books and newspapers throughout the nineteenth century: the engravings of Gustave Doré and the vast output of the illustrated press were printed this way, often with teams of engravers each working a small square of a large block.
As photographic reproduction took over around 1900, commercial wood engraving faded, but artists revived it as a fine-art medium. In Britain the Society of Wood Engravers was founded in 1920, and engravers such as Eric Gill, Eric Ravilious, Tirzah Garwood, Gwen Raverat, Clare Leighton and Agnes Miller Parker made it one of the most admired print techniques of the twentieth century. You can read more about the printmakers who shaped the medium.
Tools and materials
Wood engraving asks for a few specialised tools, but the kit is compact:
- A polished end-grain block, traditionally boxwood, or lemonwood, cherry or maple, cut square and type-high.
- A set of engraving tools: a burin or graver, plus spitstickers, scorpers and tint tools for different lines and textures.
- A brayer or roller and stiff relief ink to charge the surface evenly.
- A baren or a press for firm, even pressure, and smooth, hard-sized paper to capture the fine detail.
Getting started with wood engraving
Wood engraving is one of the more demanding relief techniques: the end-grain blocks are hard and costly, and the burins take practice to control. If you are new to printmaking, it is well worth starting with a linocut or a woodcut first. Our step-by-step guide for beginners and a simple block-print stamp teach the same inking and printing skills on softer, cheaper material. From there you can build up to printmaking presses and supplies, explore relief printing as a whole, and keep the glossary close for any new terms.