* * * * *

There are two common ways of studying old and foreign arts--the way of
the connoisseur and the way of the craftsman. The collector may value
such arts for their strangeness and scarcity, while the artist finds in
them stimulus in his own work and hints for new developments.

The following account of colour-printing from wood-blocks is based on a
study of the methods which were lately only practised in Japan, but
which at an earlier time were to some degree in use in Europe also. The
main principles of the art, indeed, were well known in the West long
before colour prints were produced in Japan, and there is some reason to
suppose that the Japanese may have founded their methods in imitating
the prints taken from Europe by missionaries. Major Strange says: "The
European art of _chiaroscuro_ engraving is in all essentials identical
with that of Japanese colour-printing.... It seems, therefore, not vain
to point out that the accidental sight of one of the Italian
colour-prints may have suggested the process to the Japanese." The
Italians aimed more at expressing "relief" and the Japanese at flat
colour arrangements; the former used oily colours, and the latter fair
distemper tints; these are the chief differences. Both in the West and
the East the design was cut on the plank surface of the wood with a
knife; not across the grain with a graver, as is done in most modern
wood engraving, although large plank woodcuts were produced by Walter
Crane and Herkomer, about thirty years ago, as posters.

The old woodcuts of the fifteenth century were produced as pictures as
well as for the illustration of books; frequently they were of
considerable size. Often, too, they were coloured by stencil plates or
freely by hand.

At the same time the printing in colour of letters and other simple
devices in books from wood-blocks was done, and a book printed at St.
Albans in 1486 has many coats of arms printed in this way; some of the
shields having two or three different colours.[1]

About the year 1500 a method of printing woodcuts in several flat tones
was invented in Germany and practised by Lucas Cranach and others. A
fine print of Adam and Eve by Hans Baldung in the Victoria and Albert
Museum has, besides the bold black "drawing," an over-tint printed in
warm brown out of which sharp high lights are cut; the print is thus in
three tones.

[1] See R. M. Burch, _Colour Printing_, 1900.

Ugo da