A multi block colour wood engraving on Lemonwood, Maple and Wild Service wood blocks printed with Cranfield Traditional Relief Inks on 150 gsm Zerkall ENE V paper on an antique 1892 Albion press at Portsmouth Printmakers in Southsea. After the 1922 oil painting ‘Lemons in a Blue Basket’ by Christopher Wood, in the collection of Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.
Edition size: 20 (plus 2 no. artist’s proof)
Image size: 93 x 73 mm approx.
Paper size: 210 x 180 mm
Price: £100 (sold unmounted)
Selected for the Society of Wood Engravers 86th Annual Exhibition 2024.
This is quite a specialist technique, partly due to the complexity of separating out the colours of the design and engraving each block to be printed in a different colour (similar to the CMYK method of commercial printing) and the expense of using several blocks to create the image. I learnt this technique from master wood engraver Chris Daunt on a course at Cherryburn, the birthplace of the founding father of wood engraving, Thomas Bewick who mastered this craft 250 years ago. The farm where he grew up is now run by the National Trust in a delightful countryside setting over looking the River Tees Valley near Newcastle.
Each colour is printed from a different block; the first, yellow for the lemons, was engraved on Maple, the more detailed blocks reserved for the hardest wood – the second (blue) and last key block (dark blue) on Lemonwood, and the third (orange brown) on Wild Service. When proofing the blocks I realised I didn’t need to remove the wood outlining the lemons I decided to use two blocks for this last colour to correct these errors. Registering the blocks to get perfect alignment is a quite a challenge as it relies on each block being exactly the same size and square, being placed in exactly the same position relative to the paper which also needs to be cut square.
May 2023
Kay A Brown 