Today I went to the Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique (Belgian Royal Library) and visited the Chalcography section. The outside of the building is striking.
If you read the earlier post you will recognize the head at the entrance. I am curious to find out how many of these have been placed around the city.
What exactly is the
Chalcography section? This department takes care of the conservation,
acquisition, and printing of engraved works for all of Belgium.
Chalcography means the art of engraving on copper or brass plates for printing.
The engraving is done on copper and they are covered with a very thin layer of metal so that it does not fill in the engraved lines. This engraving is of the town hall in the Grand Place in Brussels.
Below she is showing the back of the plate where you can see the copper showing through.
To pull a print, first the entire plate is covered in a thin layer of special ink. They told us there were ground bones in the ink. Wonder if this was lost in translation. Did I mention the entire presentation was in French? Luckily we had a women in the group who spoke very good French and she translated for us.
The ink must be very evenly distributed to get a perfect pull (print).
Next, all of the ink must be carefully wiped off, but it must be done with a light touch so as to not take the ink from the engraved lines. The first several wipes are done with a cloth that looked like cheesecloth but much stiffer. The final wipe is done by hand.
To make sure the final ink layer is even, he used a white powder on his hands. It is interesting to think how each print is slightly different depending on who inked it. Even the ones who are inked by the same person!
This plate is ready for the press.
This press is over 150 years old. They used to run the press by hand with a crank, but this one recently had a motor added. To print, the plate is laid down on a scrap piece of paper.
The high quality paper is carefully laid on top. The paper has to be soaked n water overnight. They purchase it in France and Germany. To help protect the paper from the press layers of felt are put on top before it is run through.
A perfect print!
They also create prints in color. This is done in layers - color by color.
Wood engravings are also done here, but the process is very different. The ink is applied with a roller and it is not run through a press but burnished by hand with the back of a spoon - very high tech!
They have an amazing shop where you can purchase prints from the collection of over 6000 engraved plates. And the government makes them keep the prices low so all citizens can purchase art. And yes, the prices were low, between 25 and 55 euros ($33 and $70) and for just a little more you can purchased signed ones. If they don't have a copy of the one you want, you place and order and they will pull the print for you.
I took several engraving and printing making classes in collage so I found this particularly interesting. I plan to go back and look through the vast collection and purchase a print.
Oh, how interesting. He does look very French. :-)
Posted by: Karen Burns | 09/04/2010 at 07:35 AM