Mezzotint
The first mezzotints date from the middle of the seventeenth century: discovery of the
technique is usually credited to a German soldier,
Ludwig von Siegen, in 1642, and the first production of mezzotints
to Prince Rupert in the 1650s. By the 1660s knowledge of the technique was widely known.
Mezzotint prints are distinctive in that, unlike in the other two intaglio processes, the
engraver worked from dark to light. First the plate was roughened with a rocker, a blade
with teeth that was run over the entire plate repeatedly. If the plate was inked in this
rough state it would have printed a rich black. The design was created by the engraver
smoothing out parts of the plate with a scraper or a burnisher; the smoother the area the
less ink it would hold. In this way tone could be created: light burnishing of an area would
print dark grey, heavy scraping would print light grey. The inking of the resulting plate
was a skilled and complex task; the printing process that followed was the same as for
engravings and etchings. Because of their highly worked nature, mezzotint plates became worn
by the printing process more quickly than either engravings or etchings, and so it was not
uncommon for the printmaker to regularly rework the plate during the printing process.
Mezzotints are very easy to distinguish from the other three techniques described here
because of their absence of lines and their tonal quality.