Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Warren G. Harding (1865-1923), President of the United States of America, one of the American representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. “Signed Directly on copper from the life Walter Tittle Aug. 19 1920”. Graphic Arts Collection.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/naval-conference
The Washington Naval Conference (also called the Washington Arms Conference or the Washington Disarmament Conference), was chaired by President Warren G. Harding in Washington D.C. from November 12, 1921 to February 6. 1922. Delegates included representatives from the United States, Japan, China, France, Britain, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, and Portugal. As a result of these talks, three major treaties were signed: Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty (more commonly known as the Washington Naval Treaty), the Nine-Power Treaty, and a number of smaller agreements. The link above offers more information.

The American artist Walter Tittle was commissioned to create portraits of the delegates, sketched with a needle directly onto copper plates. The final portfolio included twenty-five drypoints: Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State; Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge; Sir Auckland Campbell Geddes; Earl David Beatty; Sir Robert Laird Borden; Admiral Baron Kato, Premier of Japan; Prince Togugawa; Signor Carlo Schanzer; Admiral de Bon; Marquis Visconti Venosta; M. Albert Sarraut; Hon. David Lloyd George; Sir Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey; Sir Alfred Ernle Montacute Chatfield; Viscount Lee of Fareham; Lord Riddell of Walton Heath; Earl of Cavan; M. René Viviani, Premier of France; M. Fournier Sarlovèze; Marshall Foch; Dr. Sao-ke Alfred Sze; Hon. Elihu Root; W. Hon. John W. Garrett; Arthur Balfour; and Aristide Briand. A few are posted here.

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Prince Tokugawa, President of the House of Peers in Japan, one of the Japanese representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed “Walter Tittle Washington, Dec. 1921”. Graphic Arts Collection.

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, one of the American representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed “Walter Tittle” in pencil. Graphic Arts Collection.

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of the Earl of Balfour, K. G., one of the British representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed “Walter Tittle Washington Dec. 1921”. Graphic Arts Collection.

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State, one of the American representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed “Walter Tittle Washington, 1922”. Graphic Arts Collection

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Aristide Briand, Premier of France, one of the French representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed “Walter Tittle Washington, 1921”. Graphic Arts Collection.

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Albert Sarraut, Minister for the French Colonies, one of the French representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed in pencil “Walter Tittle”. Graphic Arts Collection.

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Admiral Ferdinand H. H. de Bon, one of the French representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed in pencil “Walter Tittle”. Graphic Arts Collection.

Walter Tittle (1883-1966), Portrait of Admiral Baron Kato, Premier of Japan, one of the Japanese representatives at the Washington Conference on the Limitation of Armaments, 1921-22. Drypoint. Signed “Walter Tittle Washington, Dec. 1921”. Graphic Arts Collection.

See also: Hugh Latimer, Naval Disarmament, a Brief Record from the Washington Conference to Date (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1930). Firestone Library JZ5625 .L385 1930

A Momentous Gathering — But Limited Success. That Was Then: October 1921 by John S. Weeren: https://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2015/10/21/that-was-then/

Beginning in 1848, the four Smith brothers (Benjamin, Francis, David, and George) produced a portfolio of forty lithographic city views printed by Boston and New York artists. The best of their stable was John William Hill (1812-1879), who went to work for the Smiths in 1850.

Over the next five years Hill completed watercolor views of Philadelphia, New Orleans, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Salem, and many other locations. These were drawn onto stone by artists at the Endicott lithography firm, including D.W. Moody, Charles Parsons, J.H. Colen, and Napoleon Sarony.

In the late 1850s, Hill fell under the spell of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. He left the commercial field of city birds-eye views for the pursuit of aesthetic landscapes and still lifes.

After his first year publishing Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper successfully, Leslie printed a long and detailed description of how the illustrations for his paper were accomplished. This is something several other American papers had failed to perfect and so, everyone took notice.

This post includes a long section of that text, along with the illustrations that accompanied the August 2, 1856 article. Note especially the physical cutting out of the whites in each matrix.

These illustrations were cut by the Irish/American wood engraver John William Orr (1815-1887), who was much in demand as a book and magazine illustrator and engraver.

A complete transcription can be found here: how illustarted newpapers are made
“. . . Immediately one or more artists are dispatched to the point of interest, and by long experience hasty sketches are made that are to be elaborated when put on the wood, which is the next stage of their advancement. The wood used is that known as “boxwood,” so much a favorite as a shrub in our gardens, but which in Turkey expands by slow growth into a tree with a trunk of a few inches in diameter.

This valuable product is nearly as hard as flint, and can be cut with great precision. From the diminutive size natural to its growth, it is only possible to produce pieces large enough for the purposes of an illustrative paper by joining innumerable small bits together and fastening them by screws on the back of the block, as will be seen by the engraving.

The art required to perform this apparently simple mechanical process cannot be understood except by those directly engaged in the business, or by those who have to use the wood to print from after it is engraved. The block of wood having been selected, and the “travelling artists” having supplied the subject, other artists again are employed in putting the design on the block, which when done is one of the most beautiful works of art without color that can be imagined.

The hour of publication is near at hand, and here we have a two-page picture to be engraved, which cannot be completed by a single hand under several days of hard labor. What is to be done?

The screws which hold the small parts of the wood together are unloosened, and the block is divided into ten or twenty parts. Upon each there is but the fragment of the drawing; one has a little bit of sky, another a group of children cut in two in the middle . . .

Ten or fifteen engravers now seize these fragmentary pieces, and work night and day; not a moment is lost; they silently and industriously pursue their work, and the surfaces of the several blocks are cut away save where they are marked by the image of the artist’s pencil, and we have left the surface which makes the impression on our paper known as a wood engraving.

“The engravers’ tools are very few in number, and very simple in construction. They are called:

1. Flat tool; 2, 3, 4 and 5, gravers; 6 and 7, tint tools; 8, sand-bag and stand on which the block is laid; 9, scraper; 10, chisel—and cost comparatively but a small sum; yet with these simple tools the engraver, with an incomprehensible certainty to the spectator, runs through the complicated outlines of the innumerable forms with make up the pictures of our weekly edition, displaying a skill of handling to our notions as wonderful as the touch of the artist himself.

…The highest mechanical ingenuity is brought into requisition to create a “cylinder press,” one of which will quietly perform the labor of many hands; and do it with a neatness and dispatch impossible to be obtained in any other way. In forms put upon the press filled with engravings is used what is termed an “overlay,” the construction of which requires much experience.

An impression is taken of each engraving on thick paper, and then, they are laid upon a table, and by a sharp knife all the white parts of the picture are removed; when this is done, the dissected picture is put upon the cylinder of the press in such a way as to make unusual pressure upon the engraving, or especial parts of it, while being printed. It is in this way that such brilliant effects are often produced. Were this otherwise, the pictures would come up with the same even tone, so peculiar and so beautiful to solid columns of type.”

 

 

In 1582, the German goldsmith Jonas Silber (active 1572-1589) created a series of nine designs for the bottom of bowls or plates. They have no titles because they were decorative patterns, not meant for framing but for copying onto tableware. Nevertheless, libraries and museums collect these ornamental prints, giving them descriptive titles such as this one which is called Saturn seated in a Landscape or Circular Design with Saturn or Saturn seated on a stone at the base of a tree with his scythe in his hand.

According to the Oxford Dictionary of Art, “Silber studied with Samuel Spillman in Berne, then with Wenzel Jamnitzer in Nuremberg. Among the most talented practitioners of the Jamnitzer style, he popularized the goldsmith’s old technique of punch engraving in many allegorical prints, cups, and small bronze plaques. He became a master in 1572, and [examples] from that year typify his early work: it has restrained Renaissance proportions and is decorated with four classical medallions on a band of punchwork verdure.”

Note, this print is not as pink as my quick photograph appears.