etching (eching)

pencil on paper (care being taken not to cut the metal), the point leaving the metal exposed where it pa es. The plate is then submerged in a bath of dilute acid, which bites in those parts of the surface exposed by the drawn lines, while the remainder of the surface is protected from its action by the wax coating. Furrow's are thus formed which, when the plate has been cleaned and charged with ink, will, if impre ed upon a piece of moist paper, print an impre ion of the design. When blackened, the plate may be plunged into cold water to give its surface a polish. For copperplates to be used in printing, the mordant commonly used is nitric acid, but in its place some modern etchers employ a so-called "Dutch mordant," made of muriatic acid and chlorate of potash. When the fainter lines of the design appear to be suffi ciently bitten in, the plate is taken from the bath and, stopped out with a paint-brush charged with a varnish being carefully washed in cold water these lines are made of asphaltum and turpentine, so that they will be protected from the acid when the plate is replaced in it. This proce is repeated from time to time until the strongest lines in the design have been sufficiently bitten in, after which the remaining ground is washed off with spirits of turpentine, and the plate is ready to be inked. Artists who etch from nature while the plate is in the acid bath proceed inversely - that is, they begin by biting in the stronger lines, and end with the fainter; but in either case, whether the latter are stopped out or last put in, they are subjected to a smaller degree of acid action. If the first impre ions are imperfect, the plate can be retouched with the dry-point, or rebitten after a fresh ground has been laid on with a roller. The tools used in etching comprise needles, gravers or burins of different shapes, scrapers, burnishers, oil-rubbers, dabbers, camel's-hair brushes, etc. A surface of porcelain may be etched and bitten, and the sunken lines then filled with a metallic pigment which on refiring can be burned into the ware and covered with glaze. IMG:content-0748.png:[blocks in formation] 2. An impre ion taken from an etched plate. -3. A line etched, or appearing as if etched. [Rare.] Never is my imagination so busy as in framing his re sponses from the etchings of his countenance. Sterne, Tristram Shandy, vii. 32. Calligraphic etching, a proce consisting in drawing with a pen dipped in common ink on a well-cleaned copperplate. When the ink is dry the plate is covered with a thin etching-ground, and afterward smoked. It is then left for a quarter of an hour in a bath of cold water, which softens the ink, so that when on removal from the bath the surface is gently rubbed with a piece of flannel, the ink and the varnish over it will come away together, leaving the design clearly traced in bright lines on the copper, to be bitten in as usual. - Etching-embroidery, a kind of fancy-work done with black silk and with watercolor, such as sepia and India ink, upon a light silk ground, in imitation of prints from engravings and etchings. It was very much in fashion during the early part of the nineteenth century. Etching figure. See figure. Painter's etching, a phrase used to designate an etching which in first conception, composition, delineation, and mechanical execution is entirely the work of one artist, as opposed to an etching executed after a design or picture by another artist. Soft-ground etching, also called gravure en manière de crayon, an etching executed by covering a plate with a ground made of equal parts of etching ether i form the ordinary etching-ground and tallow, or, in summer, of two thirds of the first and one third of the second, melted together, which, when cooled, is rolled into balls wrapped in silk. After laying the ground and smoking it lightly, a piece of thin paper with a grain is laid upon it, on which a design is drawn with a lead-pencil. As the varnish at taches itself to the paper in proportion to the pre ure of the hand, when the paper is lifted the lines traced by the pencil are exposed upon the plate, and when bitten in will yield a facsimile impre ion of the design.