This is a book about why the woodcut matters and why its power to shock, thrill and inspire has never diminished. From third-century China through to the present day, celebrated printmaker Paul Coldwell explores how we have used the medium to visualise ideas, capture key moments in history and help shape the society around us, telling the story of the art form itself in all its historical and intellectual significance.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, Ink Paper Chisel Grain is an ode to craft and care, conveying the marvel and excitement of seeing a woodcut for the first time – and what makes these encounters so unforgettable.

Sébastien Le Clerc (1637–1714) led a remarkably diverse career, engraver, cartographer, theorist of fortification, and writer on optics, architecture, and cosmology, while championing engraving as an art equal to painting and turning his workshop into a hub of learned sociability. By examining the interplay of these varied practices, Antoine Gallay explores the complex relations between arts and knowledge at the dawn of the Enlightenment, illuminating the origins of our modern dichotomy between art and science.

'Art and Science in the Spanish Baroque' explores the intersections between two defining chapters in early modern history: the development of modern science and the unfolding of Baroque culture.

This book examines three domains of seventeenth-century Spanish science and art: collecting, natural history and the visual arts, painting in particular. Its topics include the role of images in the creation and circulation of knowledge; the significance of cabinets of curiosities and art collections; still-life and vanitas paintings and their relationship with the world of learning; and the symbolic and religious interpretation of Asian and American nature.

The author focuses on case studies such as the visual representation of the bird of paradise and the passion flower, the expedition of Francisco Hernández to New Spain, the collection of wonders of the enigmatic Juan de Espina, the naturalist work of Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, and the Baroque meditation on the vanity of the world and its expression in paintings by artists such as Antonio de Pereda and Juan de Valdés Leal.

Bringing together the history of science and the history of art, this revised and updated edition of 'Art and Science in Spanish Baroque' offers new perspectives on one of the most remarkable and fascinating periods in history.

The series of ten paintings known as 'The Labours of Hercules' (1634, Museo Nacional del Prado), commissioned and executed for the decoration of the Hall of Realms in the Buen Retiro Palace, is one of Francisco de Zurbarán’s most famous artistic projects. This article offers new hypotheses regarding a key aspect of the cycle’s production: the corpus of visual sources that Zurbarán used both to represent the actions and physical appearance of Hercules and other characters. Among its contributions, this article discusses a series of prints by Hendrick Goltzius, whose direct relation to the Prado cycle had not been previously considered.

Regarded as one of the founders of both minimalism and conceptual art, Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) is best known for his large-scale wall drawings and modular structures. Alongside these works, LeWitt generated more than 350 print projects during his 40-year artistic career, including thousands of lithographs, silkscreens, etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, and linocuts. Printmaking proved to be the perfect medium for LeWitt’s brand of conceptual art, in which the “idea becomes a machine that makes the art.”
Beautiful Ideas: The Prints of Sol LeWitt explores the artist’s extensive body of prints, beginning with his earliest works and extending through his mature expressions in abstraction. Organized in four thematic sections— “Lines, Arcs, Circles, and Grids,” “Bands and Colors,” “From Geometric Figures to Complex Forms,” and “Wavy, Curvy, Loopy Doopy, and in All Directions”—the exhibition reflects the bold geometric shapes and precise lines that defined LeWitt’s artistic style. Beautiful Ideas: The Prints of Sol LeWitt is organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art and curated by David S. Areford, professor of art history at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The exhibition includes 41 objects, consisting of single prints and print series, for a total of over 100 prints.

Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground is the first exhibition to survey Parasol Press’s remarkable publications from 1970–2014, showcasing radical innovations that pushed the boundaries of printmaking and secured Parasol’s place as one of the most important print publishers of the twentieth century. Founded by Robert Feldman (PA 1954) in 1970, the publisher came to prominence for introducing a generation of Minimalist and Conceptual artists to printmaking, including Mel Bochner, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Edda Renouf, Dorothea Rockburne, and Robert Ryman. Parasol’s published editions were among the decade’s most ambitious prints, demonstrating the complex and varied ways artists explored the materiality of printed surfaces while challenging the medium’s limits. Over time, the publisher expanded its roster to encompass a diverse range of artists, including Photorealists, Neo-Expressionists, and even a group of award-winning mathematicians and scientists. Collaborating with print workshops such as Crown Point Press and Edition Domberger, Parasol Press took risks on technically daring feats, including Chuck Close’s creation of the largest mezzotint ever produced, Richard Estes’s intricate Photorealist screenprints consisting of hundreds of layers of color, and a multi-artist portfolio made entirely from rubber stamps. Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground reveals how the publisher helped forge transformative connections between dozens of artists and printers, highlighting the significance of risk-taking, collaboration, and experimentation in pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication, published by the Addison Gallery of American Art and distributed by Yale University Press, that includes a full list of all editions published by Parasol Press.

This book provides the first history of the Silk Screen Shop (1943-45) at the Granada War Relocation Center (“Amache”) in Colorado, a World War II incarceration site for Japanese Americans. The Shop printed training posters for the Bureau of Naval Personnel. In addition, in their free time, the Amache workers designed and printed material, such as dance invitations and Christmas cards, for community organizations and individuals. In the years after incarceration, the objects’ connection to the silkscreen shop was lost. This volume documents and studies the objects produced by the Shop, reconstructs workers’ experience and identity, traces the Shop as a site of community, and argues that young adult printmakers collectively developed subversive visual conventions of protest.

This article explores the multifaceted nature of printing plates, specifically focusing on six gilded intaglio plates from the Rawlinson collection at the Bodleian Library. The author engages in a comprehensive examination, employing both traditional and innovative research methods, including scientific technology, to investigate the dual identity of printing plates as functional tools and artworks. The gilded Rawlinson plates are placed within the broader tradition of gilding printing plates, which gained popularity in the 16th century. The article delves into historical examples of gilded plates, exploring instances such as Emperor Rudolf II's ownership of gilded plates and the methods employed for gilding.
Material analysis of the Rawlinson plates reveals an unexpected coating of gold, raising questions about the purpose and timing of the gilding process. The article proposes hypotheses regarding the use of the plates. Furthermore, while shedding light on the historical precedents and traditions of gilded printing plates, it acknowledges the complexity of their status. Initially serving as printing technology, the Rawlinson gilded plates were transformed into precious decorative elements before returning to their original function as printing matrices. The article emphasises the intersection of technology and artistry, inviting further collaboration between print historians, decorative arts experts, and metallurgy specialists to deepen our understanding of these intriguing artefacts.

We start by examining the pervasive, intimate connection between collections of prints and books evident from the incunabula period onwards throughout Europe and England. Although examples of nobles and the clerical elite who housed prints in their libraries may be best known, numerous other collectors, ranging from successful merchants to government officials and scholars, similarly regarded prints and books as natural bedfellows. These observations, along with the uncommon wealth of information pertaining to the European print trade present in the archives of the Plantin-Moretus Press of Antwerp, validate this study of booksellers’ significant, multifaceted involvement in this trade. The resulting bounty of novel revelations concerning the thriving market for prints in the period under consideration (ca. 1550-1640), are presented in the subsequent chapters.

Following introductory remarks on agreements for coloring prints, an overview of how both colored and plain prints were priced, and the quantities in which they were sold, we present the managers of the Plantin-Moretus Press and examine their involvement in the print trade. Beginning with the founder of the Press, Christopher Plantin, who dabbled in the sale of prints before he established his business printing and selling books, we document the various means by which he and his successors, the Moretuses, engaged in and supported the European print trade. Simultaneously presenting the ways in which clients requested prints, we relate how the booksellers’ responses to these inquiries changed with time.

Naturally, Plantin and the Moretuses could not deal in prints without the active involvement of print sellers in Antwerp, then an important center for print production in Europe. We discuss who among the myriad figures involved in this trade engaged Plantin or the Moretuses to facilitate their own dealings and who were the primary suppliers of the prints sought by the Press’s own clients. Revealing not simply the criteria imposed by some sellers prior to any sale (cash up front, for example) and the array of prices charged by different individuals, we also document the quantities in which they sold their wares and the means by which they were willing (or not) to satisfy clients in distant locals.

We conclude by shifting the focus to the demand side of the equation and examine which Antwerp print publishers were revered in which markets. Whenever possible, we also consider the wishes of specific individuals or general subgroups within society (nobles, religious orders, or merchants, for example). In addition, we demonstrate how Danzig (Gdańsk), Cologne, and Frankfurt rivaled, if not surpassed, their more famous counterparts, such as Paris, as vibrant points of exchange for the print trade. Finally, the appendices detail exactly what individual print publishers charged for specific prints, many of which are still preserved in collections today, as well as the buyers cited in these records. Simultaneously, tables provide succinct overviews of these exceptional records of the prices charged by print publisher and for prints sold in bulk, either colored or plain.