How an etching is made

Potiphars wife. etching by Rembrandt. All images this page from artrenewal.org

For those of you who think might imagine that baroque art was stodgy and prudish, here is an image for you. There is a lot of very earthy material from the Dutch masters.

An etching is different from an engraving because the lines are cut into the plate by the action of an acid rather than by a sharp tool in the hands of the artist. Here's how that works. The plate made of copper or less commonly zinc is coated with a ground, there are several types but they all do about the same thing. They are an asphalt or waxy material that is put onto the plate that has been heated to accept and melt them. When the plate cools, the ground is like a layer of paint that shields the copper surface of the plate from the action of acid in which it will later be immersed. The artist uses a fine needle to draw on the surface of the pate. The needle doesn't mark or scribe the plate, it merely reveals the copper surface through the protective ground. Then the plate is placed in a bath of acid. The acid attacks or bites the plate where the needle has exposed the copper and not where the ground remains unopened.

Above, Adam and Eve.

When the plate is removed from the acid the ground is removed with a solvent. The lines are bitten into the surface of the plate by the action of the acid. Ink is applied to the surface of the plate and it is wiped back leaving the ink only in those incised lines. The plate with a sheet of dampened paper is run through the parallel rollers of the press at high pressure. The paper is pushed up into the lines of the plate and receives the ink. The paper is then pulled away from the plate and the process is repeated. Below, the Good Samaritan.


Printing etchings is slow business and nothing like the high speed printing of a commercial press today. A small plate can be printed perhaps half a dozen times and hour, perhaps a little quicker in the hands of a master printer.It is a laborious handcraft that yields only a limited number of prints as the soft copper plate degrades and eventually the plate no longer produces accurate prints. So it is truly a limited edition print.

More about etching tomorrow.