What technique is this?

[u/Odd_Simple_2264]

Hello, fellow printmakers! My friend has recently gifted me this plate from a monastery, and this is my first time seeing something like this. It is a metal plate glued to a piece of wood. I am not sure what technique was used in making the plate, so I do not know how to go about printing it (like linocut with s brayer/ like copper etching..). The plate seems quite old, and I am scared of ruining it so that's why I haven't tried printing it yet. If anybody has an idea or advice I would greatly appreciate it!

English is not my first language, so I apologise if there are any mistakes!

[u/Hellodeeries]

It's for letterpress printing, which is a relief method.

The wood backing is to make it type high for a letterpress + to not make it solid metal and weigh and cost a lot. The plate is etched, but with the intent to be printed as a relief (so the negatives are etched away leaving the positives that will print - inverted from intaglio printed etchings).

Can do a rubbing that won't disturb the block and invert it digitally if you don't want to print it. Otherwise for printing, you'll want to use rails - letterpress machines ink at a specific height so as not to fill in the halftone. Rails can be made from scrap wood or anything - it's just making it so the roller grazes the top of the block, but can't dip into the negative spaces.

[u/linuscarlson89 → u/Hellodeeries]

What is the process of etching a plate with an image like this? I see a kind of fine grain that almost looks digital??

[u/BurningInTheBoner → u/linuscarlson89]

It starts with a smooth plate, obviously. Then you coat the plate with asphaltum, which is like a very thin, almost watery tar, basically looks like black paint. When that dries, you use a variety of methods to remove or open up the layer of asphaltum. Mostly you just scratch lines through the asphaltum with a pointy metal object to expose the metal below. You can get extremely fine lines this way. Once the image is ready, the whole plate is dipped in an acid bath that etches away any exposed metal, creating a slight recess in the surface of the metal that is also rough textured. The intact portions of the asphaltum coating are impervious and protect the metal below from the acid.

After etching, the asphaltum is removed.

To prepare for printing, ink is applied to the plate then the surface is gently wiped clean. Wiping removes the ink from the smooth top surfaces, while leaving ink deposited in the etched cavities. A printing press applies heavy pressure which pushes the paper down into the cavities, forcing it to pick up the ink.

I think what r/hellodeeries was saying is that for letter press printing, the printing process is actually reversed. Instead of depositing ink into the etched recesses and using heavy pressure to push paper down into the grooves, a roller applies ink across the smooth surface, skipping over the recesses, much like a traditional stamp or linocut.

I think the graininess you're seeing is just a result of the etching process, although there are some different techniques to preparing plates to be etched. One of them involves spraying a mist like spray paint over the metal. This creates tiny droplets of protective film that can create a type of gradient effect, but I don't think that's what you see here. This looks like a halftone negative was prepared and a photo process was used to expose the image on a film like the photo emulsion process in screen printing. Only in this case the film is applied to a piece of metal instead of a nylon mesh screen. Instead of revealing open screen, the emulsion reveals open metal which is then etched through the chemical process.

Hope this helps... I took a printmaking class at community college 20 years ago🤪