Intaglio Printing
Ink is packed into grooves cut or bitten into a plate and pulled out under heavy pressure, which is what buys these methods their fine lines and deep tonal blacks.
Dictionary entry
- Intaglio 15th century– / Technique
Ink is left in lines and hollows cut below the surface of a metal plate, and heavy pressure drives damp paper into them, picking up precise lines and the trace of the plate's edge. How the plate is lowered gives each technique its name, so a plate bitten with acid is an etching and a plate roughened then burnished is a mezzotint.
- Mezzotint 1640s– / Technique
The whole plate is roughened to hold a deep black, then burnished back to raise the lights, so that the image emerges from soft velvet darkness instead of from lines.
- Etching 16th century– / Technique
A needle draws through the acid-resistant ground and the acid bites the metal it exposes, cutting lines into the plate that are thin, fluid and close to handwriting.