Hand engraving

I’ve been working for Malcolm Appleby, an engraver, designer, silversmith, jeweller, gardener, chicken keeper, hobbit-house creator, natural historian, performer, storyteller, etc. etc. Malcolm has been engraving, designing, making for over 45 years and has generated huge volume of work and all the associated stuff that goes with it, drawings, prints, photos, press cuttings, invoices, correspondence. He’s kept a lot and it’s been my job to go through it and archive and catalogue it. It’s been a fascinating process and I’ve learned an enormous amount about how to live a successful life and run a business as a craftsman/artist.

He hosted a meeting to celebrate hand engraving last weekend, from 30th June to 2nd July, 2011. The workshop was alive with chat and hammering metal that spilled out into the sunshine in the garden and quieter refuges in the house. It was great to see such a varied group of craftspeople working within such a small and specialist world. Some, like Wally Gilbert, have been silversmithing for years, others like Aileen Tan, are early in their careers. Aileen gave us a demonstration of her kinetic jewellery, with tiny square ended bolts swinging and twirling on their tracks, completely hypnotic and exquisitely well made. I learned about different techniques: there were chasers like Wally and Miriam Hanid who shape metal into organic forms, Ndidi Ekubia hammers vigour into her pieces and Jane Short enlivens her work with the colour of enamels. But this weekend was about engraving, another technique they could all use to enhance their work.

Engraving is simply making a mark into a surface by cutting, scratching, scoring, chiselling. It’s not that different from drawing or doodling. I’ve been engraving into wood for quite a while (since the last engraver’s meeting at Aultbeag a couple of years ago) but have recently started engraving in metal, silver and copper, and have been intrigued by the differences. Firstly, there’s the materials: tools bite more into metal so the tools don’t skite off as easily as they do with wood. Then there’s the finished object: wood engraving is used for illustration so the engraved wood is not the finished object it’s a block to take a print from and the engraved lines will not print, it’s the uncut surfaces that take the ink, a simple fact that took me a long time to get my head around. And of course the printed image will be a mirror of the engraved surface, a crucial point for some designs. On silver the surface you’re engraving is an embellishment on the finished object and there’s no need to worry about leaving uncut space for inking up. Engraving on metal can be purely decorative, a way of emphasising form, or a narrative device, used to tell a story connected to the object or the engraver or the commissioner. Malcolm is a great one for storytelling and many of his pieces illustrate some sort of narrative, but engravers, like all craftspeople/artists are a varied lot and not everyone tells a story. It was striking to me how many of the engravers at the meeting were pattern makers and the wood engraving session on Saturday really demonstrated that.