Many famous woodcuts were never cut by the artist whose name they carry
For centuries a woodcut was a team effort. The artist drew the picture, a specialist carver called a formschneider cut away everything else, often destroying the drawing in the process, and yet another craftsman printed it. That is why some museum labels say a print was designed by, not made by, an artist.
A woodcut is a relief print. Using gouges, the carver removes the areas that should stay blank and leaves the image standing at the surface of the block, which is cut along the grain rather than into the end grain as in wood engraving. A roller called a brayer lays ink on the high parts only. Colour prints need a separate block for each hue, with the paper registered to a frame so every layer lands in place. Because it is a relief method, only light pressure is needed compared with etching.
Some carvers became famous in their own right. In the 16th century Hieronymus Andreae, who even took Formschneider as his surname, ran a workshop and worked as a printer and publisher too. Splitting the labour meant a trained painter could take up the medium without learning woodworking. The design reached the block either drawn straight onto a whitened surface or glued on as a paper sheet, and in both cases the cutting consumed it. European carvers often chose boxwood, pear or cherry; Japanese printers preferred the cherry species Prunus serrulata.
Printing itself took three forms. Early European prints from about 1400 to 1440 were stamped, with the block pressed or hammered onto paper or cloth. Rubbing the back of the paper was the usual East Asian method, done in Japan with a pad called a baren. Presses came into use for European prints around 1480. Only in the early 20th century did some artists start doing every stage themselves, a movement Japan called sosaku-hanga, while many Western artists turned to the easier linocut.
The technique came from China, where printed silk survives from before 220, and reached Europe in the 13th century, shortly before paper was made in Italy. Another route may have run through Egyptian Romani who arrived in Bavaria and Bohemia in the early 15th century, bringing a printing craft called tarsh, whose religious images and earthy colours resemble early European woodcuts.
Source: Woodcut
