Academy board is a pasteboard comprised of sheets of paper, cut to size and pressed together before being treated with a ground of white lead, oil and chalk and sometimes embossed with indentations in imitation of a canvas weave. Academy board has been used chiefly for sketches and studies since the early 19th century. Research Academy Board
Academy figures are drawings in black and white chalk on tinted paper from living models. They are so named from the Royal Academy of Artists. Research Academy Figures
Adulteration is a term not only applied in its proper sense to the fraudulent mixture of articles of commerce, food, drink, drugs, seeds, etc, with noxious or inferior ingredients, but also by magistrates and analysts to accidental impurity, and even in some cases to actual substitution.
The chief objects of adulteration are to increase the weight or volume of the article, to give a colour which either makes a good article more pleasing to the eye or else disguises an inferior one, to substitute a cheaper form of the article, or the same substance from which the strength has been extracted, or to give it a false strength.
Among the adulterations which were commonly practised around 1905 for the purpose of fraudulently increasing the weight or volume of an article are the following: Bread was adulterated with alum or sulphate of copper, which gives solidity to the gluten of damaged or inferior flour; with chalk or carbonate of soda to correct the acidity of such flour; and with boiled rice or potatoes, which enables the bread to carry more water, and thus to produce a larger number of loaves from a given quantity of flour. Wheatflour is adulterated with other inferior flours, as the flour from rice, bean, Indian-corn, potato, and with sulphate of lime, alum, etc. Milk was usually adulterated with water. The adulterations generally present in butter consisted of an undue proportion of salt and water, lard, tallow, and other fats; when of poor quality it was frequently coloured with a little annatto, and, at times, with the juice of carrots. Genuine butter should not contain less than 80 percent of butter-fat. Cheese was also coloured with annatto and other substances. Tea was adulterated chiefly in China with sand, iron-filings, chalk, gypsum, Chinaclay, exhausted tea leaves, and the leaves of the sycamore, horse-chestnut, and plum, whilst colour and weight were added by black-lead, indigo, Prussian-blue (one of the deleterious ingredients used by the Chinese in converting the lowest qualities of black into green teas), gum, turmeric, soapstone, catechu, and other substances.
Confections were adulterated with flour and sulphate of lime. Preserved vegetables were kept green and poisoned by salts of copper. The acridity of mustard is commonly reduced by flour, and the colour of the compound is improved by turmeric. Pepper was adulterated with linseed-meal, flour, mustard husks, etc. Colour was given to pickles by salts of copper, acetate of copper, etc. Ale was adulterated with common salt, Cocculus Indicus, grains of paradise, quassia, and other bitters, sulphate of iron, alum, etc. Porter and stout were mixed with sugar, treacle, salt, and an excess of water. Brandy was diluted with water, and burned sugar was added to improve the colour; sometimes bad whisky was flavoured and coloured so as to resemble brandy, and sold under its name.
Gin was mixed with excess of water, and flavouring matters of various kinds, with alum and tartar, were added. Rum was diluted with water, and the flavour and colour kept up by the addition of cayenne and burned sugar. For champagnegooseberry and other inferior wines were often substituted. Port was manufactured from red Cape and other inferior wines, the body, flavour, strength, and colour being produced by gum-dragon, the washings of brandy casks, and a preparation of German bilberries. Cheap brown sherry was mixed with Cape and other low-priced brandies, and was flavoured with the washings of brandy casks, sugar-candy, and bitter almonds. Pale sherries were produced by gypsum, by a process called plastering, which removes the natural acids as well as the colour of the wine. Other wines were adulterated with elderberry, logwood, Brazil-wood, cudbear, red beetroot, etc, for colour; with lime or carbonate of lime, carbonate of soda, carbonate of potash, and litharge, to correct acidity; with catechu, sloe-leaves, and oak-bark for astringency; with sulphate of lime and alum for removing colour; with cane-sugar for giving sweetness and body; with alcohol for fortifying; and with ether, especially acetic ether, for giving bouquet and flavour.
Medicines, such as jalap, opium, rhubarb, cinchonabark, scammony, aloes, sarsaparilla, squills, etc, were mixed with various foreign substances. Castor-oil has been adulterated with other oils; and inferior oils were often. mixed with cod-liver oil. Cantharides were often mixed with golden-beetle and also artificially-coloured glass.
The adulteration of seeds was largely practised also, the seed which forms the adulterant being of course of the most worthless kind that can be had. Thus turnip-seed was mixed with rape, wild mustard, or charlock, which are steamed and kiln-dried to destroy their vitality, so as to evade detection in the progress of growth; old and useless turnip-seed was also used fraudulently mixed with fresh seeds. Clover was also much mixed with plantain and mere weeds.
Acts against adulteration have been passed in various countries and at various times. In Britain there was a law against it as early as 1267. Research Adulteration
Artesian Wells, so called from the French province of Artois, where they appear to have been first used on an extensive scale, are perpendicular borings into the ground through which water rises to the surface of the soil, producing a constant flow or stream, the ultimate sources of supply being higher than the mouth of the boring, and the water thus rising by the well-known law. They are generally sunk in valley plains and districts where the lower pervious strata are bent into basin-shaped curves.
The rain falling on the outcrops of these saturates the whole porous bed, so that when the bore reaches it the water by hydraulic pressure rushes up towards the level of the highest portion of the strata. The supply is sometimes so abundant as to be used extensively as a moving power, and in arid regions for fertilizing the ground, to which purpose artesian springs have been applied from a very remote period. Thus many artesian wells have been sunk in the Algerian Sahara which have proved an immense boon to the district.
The water of most of these is potable, but a few are a little saline, though not to such an extent as to influence vegetation. The hollows in which London and Paris lie are both perforated in many places by borings of this nature. At London they were first sunk only to the sand B B, but latterly into the chalk c o. One of the most celebrated artesian wells is that of Crenelle near Paris, 1798 feet deep, completed in 1841, after eight years' work. Artesian wells are now common in many countries, and have been sunk to the depth of a mile or more. As the temperature of water from great depths is invariably higher than that at the surface, artesian wells have been made to supply warm water for heating manufactories, greenhouses, hospitals, fish-ponds, etc. Petroleumwells are generally of the same technical description. Artesian wells were later made with larger diameters than formerly, and altogether their construction was rendered much more easy after the industrial revolution. Research Artesian Wells
Downs is a term given to undulating grassy hills or uplands, specially applied to two ranges of undulating chalk hills in England, extending through Surrey, Kent, and Hampshire, known as the North and South Downs. The word is sometimes used as equivalent to dunes or sand-hills. Research Downs
Drawing is the art of representing upon a flat surface the forms of objects, and their positions and relations to each other. The idea of nearness or distance is given by the aid of perspective, foreshortening, and gradation. The term drawing, in its strict sense, is only applicable to the representing of the forms of objects in outline, with the shading necessary to develop roundness or modelling. In art, however, the term has a wider significance. Highly-finished painting's in water-colour are called drawings, as are also sketches or studies in oils.
Drawing, in its restricted sense, may be divided into these kinds: (1) pen drawing; (2) chalk drawing, which may include lead-pencil drawing; (3) crayon drawing; (4) drawing shaded with the brush or hair-pencil; (5) architectural or mechanical drawing (technical drawing).
Pen drawings are often confined to pure outlines; an appearance of relief or projection being given by thickening or doubling the lines on the shadow side. Finished pen drawings have all the shading produced by combinations of lines. Chalk drawings (including lead-pencil drawings) are most suited for beginners, as errors can be easily corrected. Black, red, and white chalks are used. When the chalk is powdered and rubbed in with a stump, large masses and broad effects can be produced with much rapidity. A combination of hatching and stumping is generally preferable to adhering exclusively to either mode. Crayon drawings are those in which the true colours of the objects represented are more or less completely wrought out with different coloured crayons. Drawings shaded with the brush are outlined with the pencil or pen, the shading being laid on or washed in with the brush in tints of Indian ink, sepia, or colour. Architectural and mechanical drawings are those in which the proportions of a building, machine, etc, are accurately set out for the guidance of the constructor: objects are in general delineated by geometric or orthographic projection.
The great schools of painting differ from one another as much in their drawing as in their painting. In Italy the Roman school, through Raphael's fine sense for the beautiful and expressive in form, and through his study of the antique, became the true teacher of beautiful drawing. The Florentine school tried to surpass the Roman precisely in this particular, but it lost by exaggeration what it had gained by learning and a close study of anatomy. In the Lombard school a tender style of drawing is seen through harmonious colouring, and, in the Venetian school the drawing is often veiled in the richness of the colour. The Dutch school excels in a careful and minute style of naturalistic drawing, combined with great excellence in colouring. The French school in the time of Poussin was very accurate in its drawing; at a later period its style betrayed a great amount of mannerism. David introduced again a purer taste in drawing and a close study of the antique, and these are qualities which distinguish his school (the so-called classical school) from the romantic and eclectic schools of a later period. The drawing of the British school is naturalistic rather than academic. During the 19th century it improved greatly in accuracy and expressiveness. Research Drawing
Dutch Pink is a bright yellow colour formerly used in distemper, for staining paper-hangings, and for other ordinary purposes. It is composed of chalk or whiting coloured with a decoction of birch leaves, French berries, and alum. Research Dutch Pink
Engraving is the art of representing objects and depicting characters on metal, wood, precious stones, etc, by means of incisions made with instruments variously adapted to the substances operated upon and the description of work intended.
Impressions from metal plates are named engravings, prints, or plates those printed from wood being called indifferently wood engravings and wood-cuts. While, however, these impressions are not altogether dissimilar in appearance, the processes are distinct. In plates the lines intended to print are incised, and in order to take an impression the plate is daubed over with a thick ink which fills all the lines. The surface is then wiped perfectly clean, leaving only the incised lines filled with ink. A piece of damp paper is now laid on the face of the plate, and both are passed through the press, which causes the ink to pass from the plate to the paper. This operation needs to be repeated for every impression, for the wood block, on the contrary, the spaces between the lines of the drawing are cut out, leaving the lines standing up like type, the printing being from the inked surface of the raised lines, and effected much more rapidly than plate printing.
Engraving on wood, intended for printing or taking impressing from, long preceded engraving on metals. The art is of eastern origin, and at least as early as the 10th century engraving and printing from wood blocks was common in China. We first hear of wood engraving being cultivated in Europe by the Italians and Germans in the 13th century. For a hundred and fifty years, however, there is small indication of the practice of the art, which was at first confined to the production of block-books, playing cards, and religious prints. In the 15th century the art of printing from engraved plates was discovered in Florence by Maso Finiguerra.
Engraving had long been used as a means of decorating armour, metal vessels, etc, the engravers generally securing duplicates of their works before laying in the niello (a species of metallic enamel) by filling the lines with dark colour, and taking casts of them in sulphur. The discovery of the practicability of taking impressions upon paper led to engraving upon copper plates for the purpose of printing from.
The date of the earliest known niello proof upon paper is 1452. The work of the Florentine engravers, however, was almost at once surpassed in Venice and elsewhere in North Italy by Andrea Mantegna, Girolamo Mocetto, Giovanni Batista del Porto, and others. In Marc Antonio Raimondi, who wrought under the guidance of Raphael, and reproduced many of his works, the art reached its highest point of the earlier period, and Rome became the centre of a new school, which included Marco da Ravenna, Giulio Bonasone, and Agostino de Musis.
In the meantime, in Germany the progress of the art had been not less rapid. Of the oldest school the most important engraver is Martin Schongauer. He was, however, surpassed a generation later by Albert Durer who excelled both in copper and wood engraving, especially in the latter. Among his most famous contemporaries and successors were Burgkmair and Lucas Cranach. The Dutch and Flemish schools, of which Durer's contemporary Lucas van Leyden was the head, did much to enlarge the scope of the art, either by paying increased attention to the rendering of light and shade, and the expression of local colour, as in the case of Cornelius Cort and Bloemart; or by developing freedom and expression of line, as in the case of Goltzius and his pupils.
Rubens influenced engraving through the two Bolswerts, Vorstermann, Pontius, and de Jode, who engraved many of his works on a large size. Towards the end of the 17th century etching, which had before been rarely used, became more common, and was practised with great success by Rembrandt and other painters of that period. In France Noel Garnier founded a school of engraving about the middle of the 16th century; but it produced no work of any high distinction until the reign of Louis XIV, when Nanteuil's pupil Gerard Edelinck and Gerard Audran flourished. The former was skilled in using his graver to produce colour effects, the latter is famed for his engravings from Nicolas Poussin and Le Brun. But these were all surpassed about the middle of the 18th century by Wille, a German resident in Paris.
Before the middle of the 17th century England produced little noteworthy work, availing herself principally of the work of foreign engravers, of whom many took up temporary and even permanent residence. The first English engraver of marked importance was William Hogarth, whose works are distinguished for character and expression. Vivares, a Frenchman by birth, laid the foundation of the English school of landscape-engraving, which was still further developed by William Woollet, who was also an excellent engraver of the human figure.
In historical engraving a not less remarkable advance was made by Sir Robert Strange, and Richard Earlom produced some admirable works in mezzotint. In succession to these came William Sharp, James Bazire, Bartolozzi, James Heath, Bromley, Raimbach, and others.
The substitution of steel for copper plates around 1820 to 1830 gave the power of producing a much larger number of fine impressions, and opened new possibilities for highly-finished work.
During the closing years of the 18th century line engraving attained a depth of colour and fulness of tone in which earlier works generally are deficient, and during the following century it reached a perfectness of finish which it had not previously attained. A picture, whether figure or Landscuape, may be translated by line engraving with all its depth of colour, delicacy of tone, and effect of light and shade; the various textures, whether of naked flesh, silk, satin, woollen, or velvet, all successfully rendered by ingenious modes of laying the lines and combinations of lines of varying strength, width, and depth. Among engraverswho have produced historical works of large size and in the line manner the names of Raphael Mrghen, Longhi, Anderloni, Garavaglia, and Toschi, in Italy; of Forster, Henriquel-Dupont, Bridoux, and Blanchard, in France; of John Burnet, J H Robinson, Doo, J H Watt, and Lumb Stocks, in England, stand pre-eminent.
Among historical and portrait engravers in the stipple or dotted manner the names of H T Ryall, Henry Robinson, William Holl and Francis Holl, may well be mentioned.
In the period 1820 to 1860 landscape engraving attained a perfection in Great Britain which it had not attained in any other country, or at any other time. Among landscape engravers the names of George Gooke, William Miller, E Goodall, J Cousen, K Brandard, and William Forrest hold the foremost places. In mezzotinto engraving Samuel Cousins is unrivalled.
In the period 1830 to 1845 various publications called Annuals, composed of light literature in prose and verse, and illustrated by highly-finished engravings in steel, were very popular. The engravings were necessarily of small size, and are generally of great excellence. A number of them both figure and landscape are executed with such finish and completeness as to be esteemed perfect works. The unrivalled illustrations of Rogers' Poems and Rogers' Italy after Turner and Stothard belong to this period. Many of the originals of the engravings in the Annuals were finished pictures of large size.
A great part of the difficulty in engraving on a small scale from a large picture, consists in determining what details can be left out, and still preserve the full effect and character of the original. The most noted engravers for work of small size are Charles Heath, Charles Bolls, W Finden, E Finden, E. Portbury, J Goodyear, F Engleheart, Henry Le Keux, E Goodall, and W Miller.
After 1870 many plates were produced by a combination of etching and dry point, a comparatively cheap and rapid process. Such works were fashionable and very popular with collectors. But while some of them have been excellent of their kind, the process is of limited resource, and the best works in this manner will not stand comparison with the masterpieces of line engraving. Through lack of encouragement, change of fashion, and the adoption of other methods of reproduction such as photography, line engraving rapidly becoming a lost art in Great Britain. The men who made line engraving famous died, and there was no sufficient inducement for younger men to pursue that art. In France and in Germany some able line engravers were still in practice at the start of the 20th century.
Line Engraving, as implied by the term, is executed entirely in lines. The tools are few and simple. They consist of the graver or burin, the point, the scraper, and the burnisher; an oil-stone or hone, dividers, a parallel square, a magnifying lens; a bridge on which to rest the hand; a blind or shade of tissue paper, to make the light fall equally on the plate, callipers for levelling important erasures, a small steelanvil, a small pointed hammer, and punches. In etching, the following articles are required: a resinous mixture called etching-ground, capable, when spread very thinly over the plate, of resisting the action of the acids used; a dauber for laying the ground equally; a hand-vice; some hair-pencils of different sizes, and bordering wax, made of burgundy-pitch, bees'-wax, and a little oil.
In engraving, the plate, which is highly polished and must be free from all scratches, is first prepared by spreading over it a thin layer of ground. The surface is then smoked, and the outline of the picture transferred to it by pressure from the paper on which it has been drawn in fine outlines by a black-lead pencil. The picture is then drawn on the ground with the etching-needle, which removes the ground in every form produced by it, and leaves the bright metal exposed. A bank of wax is then put round the plate and diluted acid poured on it, which eats out the metal from the lines from which the ground has been removed, but leaves the rest of the plate untouched. The plate is then gone over with the graver, the etched lines clearly defuned, broken lines connected, new lines added, etc. Sometimes the plate is rebitten more than once, those parts which are sufficiently bitten in the first treatment being stopped with varnish, and only the selected parts exposed to after-biting. Finally the burnisher is brought into play alternately with the graver and point to give perfectness and finish.
Such is the process for landscape engraving. In historical and portrait engraving of the highest class, the lines are first drawn on the metal with a fine point and then cut in by the graver, first making a fine line and afterwards entering and re-entering till the desired width and depth of lines is attained. Much of the excellence of such engravings depends on the mode in which the lines are laid, their relative thickness, and the manner in which they cross each other. In historical engraving etching is but little used, and then only for accessories and the less important parts.
In Soft-ground Etching the ground, made by mixing lard with common etching-ground, is laid on the plate and smoked as before, but its extreme softness renders it very liable to injury. The outline of the subject is drawn on a piece of rough paper larger than the plate. The paper is then damped, and laid gently over the ground face upwards, and the margins folded over and pasted down on the back of the plate. When the paper is dry and tightly stretched the bridge is laid across, and with a hardish pencil and firm pressure the drawing is completed in the usual manner. The pressure makes the ground adhere to the back of the paper at all parts touched by the pencil, and on. the paper being lifted carefully off, these parts of the ground are lifted with it, and the corresponding parts of the plate thus left bare are exposed to the subsequent action of the acid. The granulated surface of the paper, causing similar granulations in the touches on the ground, gives the character of a chalk-drawing. The biting-in is effected in the same manner as already described, and the subject is finished by re-biting and dotting with the graver.
Stipple, or Chalk Engraving, in its pure state, is exclusively composed of dots, varying in size and form as the nature of the subject demands, but few stipple plates are now produced without a large admixture of line in all parts, flesh excepted. A great advance, however, was made in stipple engraving by the introduction of large and varied forms of dotting in the draperies, the results almost rivalling line engraving in richness and power.
The Mixed Style is based on mezzotinto, which, still forming the great mass of shading, is in this method combined with etching in the darker, and stipple in the more delicate parts. By this combination a plate will produce a larger number of good impressions than were it done entirely in mezzotinto.
The wood best adapted for engraving is box. It is cut across the grain in thicknesses equal to the height of type, these slices being subjected to a lengthened process of seasoning, and then smoothed for use. Every wood engraving is the representative of a finished drawing previously made on the block; the unshaded parts being cut away, and the lines giving form, shading, texture, etc, left standing in relief by excavations of varied size and character, made between them by gravers of different forms. Drawings on wood are made either with black-lead pencil alone or with pencil and indian ink, the latter being employed for the broader and darker masses. It is now much the practice to photograph drawings made in black and white upon the wood instead of making the drawing on the wood block. When the drawing is put on the wood by washes or by photography instead of being entirely done by pencil lines, the engraver has to devise the width and style of lines to be employed instead of cutting in facsimile, as is the case when the drawing is made entirely in lines. The tools required for wood engraving are similar but more numerous than those of the engraver on copper or steel. Research Engraving
Geophagism is the practice of eating some kind of earthy matter, such as rock or chalk. It is most common among non-industrialised races, and was once thought to allay hunger. However, new evidence suggests that some peoples obtain valuable minerals in their diet from geophagism, as those minerals are not available in their normal food, and as such early writers who described the practice as 'depraved' were as naïve as they were prejudiced. Research Geophagism
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Academy Board
