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About Mezzotint Printmaking

Regarded by many as the most difficult of printmaking techniques, mezzotint, an intaglio process, was developed in seventeenth-century Amsterdam by Ludwig von Siegen.

A copper plate is prepared with an instrument called a ‘rocker’ which has a curved, serrated, blade that is rocked back and forth over the plate surface. As the blade’s teeth prick the copper they plow up tiny burrs. These burrs hold ink.

The artist creates the image to be printed by scraping and/or burnishing selected areas of the abraided surface of the plate - a process of creating light areas from dark - which is capable of delivering a full tonal range.

Ink is applied across the surface of the plate, and is subsequently wiped with cloth (scrim/tarlatan). The first stage of wiping  ‘pushes’ the ink into the abraided surface of the plate. The second stage involves removing the ink from the scraped/burnished parts of the plate.

The plate is then printed at high pressure onto pre-dampened paper. 

Due to the relative delicacy of the plate’s surface, and the high pressure applied during the printing phase, a typical mezzotint plate may yield no more than twenty-five prints before it is worn out.