knife, they drew and carved with it. Their feeling for line and
shape was sensitive, crisp, and supple. But although they created the
masterpieces of the medium they suffered from the traditional contempt
for their craft. Creative ability in a woodcutter was rarely recognized,
and the art fell into gradual decline. By the time the 18th century
opened it had been almost entirely abandoned as a means of creating and
interpreting works of art, and had been relegated to a minor place among
the print processes.

The attitude of the print connoisseur was clearly stated as early as
1762 by Horace Walpole:[6]

I have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts;
that art never was executed in any perfection in England: engraving
on metal was a final improvement of the art, and supplied the
defects of cuttings in wood. The ancient wooden cuts were certainly
carried to a great heighth, but that was the merit of the masters,
not of the method.

[Footnote 6: Walpole, 1765 (1st ed. 1762), p. 3.]

William Gilpin in 1768 went even further. Describing the various
contemporary print processes he omitted the woodcut entirely as not
worthy of consideration. He acknowledged that "wooden cuts" were once
executed by early artists but made no additional reference to the
medium.[7]

[Footnote 7: William Gilpin, _An Essay on Prints_, London, 1781
(1st ed. 1768), p. 47. "There are three kinds of prints,
engravings, etchings, and mezzotintos."]

As late as 1844 Maberly[8] cautioned print amateurs to steer clear of
block prints:

Prints, from wooden blocks, are much less esteemed, or, at least,
are, generally speaking, of greatly less cost than engravings on
copper; and there are connoisseurs who may, perhaps, consider them
as rather derogatory to a fine collection.

[Footnote 8: Maberly, 1844, p. 130.]

Specialized histories of wood engraving, written mainly by 19th-century
practitioners and bibliophiles, have tended to emphasize literal
rendition rather than artistic vision. The writers favored wood
engraving executed with the burin on the end grain of hard dense wood,
such as box or maple, because it could produce finer details than the
old woodcut, which made use of knife and horizontally grained wood. They
judged by narrow craft standards concerned with exact imitation of
surface textures. Linton, for example, is almost contemptuous in his
references to the chiaroscuro woodcut