The Sailor's Bride - Uncut Woodblock1860 – 1861 Accession number: 1906P874 Brush and black ink over Chinese white on boxwood block. Width: 125 mm Height: 86 mm Depth: 23 mm InformationThis is an uncut woodblock for the illustration 'The Sailor's Bride' which was published in 'Once a Week' (13 April, 1861, vol. 4, p. 434) to illustrate a poem by Marian E. James. The reverse shows that it is made of two boxwood blocks which have been screwed together. The opposing grains of the two blocks can be seen showing through the drawing. Sandys drew his design using pencil, brush and ink over a thin layer of 'Chinese' white. Usually the design would then have been engraved by cutting away the areas not drawn on using a metal burin. Unusually, this block has been left uncut. This may well have been an extra block required due to difficulties with finding a suitable engraver. Sandys was not pleased with the initial proofs of the illustration engraved by W. H. Hooper and demanded that his design be re-engraved by Joseph Swain. The Birmingham collection holds two proofs of the engraving by Hooper and two of the final wood-engravings by Swain. These show the two engraver's different approaches to translating Sandys's design in wood: Hooper keeps the thin, subtle lines drawn by Sandys but Swain is bolder, including thicker lines and creating more flat blocks of white.The name C Wells and the word 'INVENTOR' has been etched onto the side of the block. This refers to Charles Wells 'a joiner by trade, who was the inventor of the bolted block in 1850, a method of extending the size of the block, which also allowed it to be taken apart and shared between engravers' to speed up production (Betty Elzea, 'Frederick Sandys 1829-1904: A Catalogue RaisonnĂ©,' p. 201). Wells was a life-long friend of Swain, one of the leading nineteenth-century wood engravers whose firm employed a number of men including W. H. Hooper.
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