Posted by:
Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings

Women and the production of ornament prints

Most often when we read about the history of it records the achievements of male artists. However from early on there have also been women artists. In Book XXXV of his Natural...

Engraved Ornament project

Cutting, colouring and inscribing: Part 3: inscriptions on ornament prints

Some prints in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum have been embellished by their early owners through the addition of inscriptions in pen and ink. This last part...

Engraved Ornament project

Cutting, colouring and inscribing Part 2: Colouring in

In the second part of three blogs looking at past intervention to ornament engravings this entry considers enlivening prints through the application of colour. Prints are commonly...

Engraved Ornament project

Cutting, colouring and inscribing Part 1: extracting ornament: cutting out designs from ornament prints

Produced as designs for the decorative arts, from early on ornament prints also appealed to collectors. In some cases these prints, intended to inspire designs from artists and...

Engraved Ornament project

Blackwork prints: Part 3: the demise of the blackwork ornament print

As discussed in the previous blog entry by the seventeenth century printmakers were displaying their technical mastery through combining engraving and blackwork in their plates....

Engraved Ornament project

Blackwork Prints: Part 2: Technical mastery and enlivening blackwork ornament prints

The technique of blackwork engraving, using goldsmith’s tools to gouge out large channels for ink was developed for jewellery designs at the end of the sixteenth century. Part...

Engraved Ornament project

Blackwork prints: Part 1:Early blackwork prints, the development of a new technique and its uses

The next three blog posts will look at blackwork prints. Developed at the end of the sixteenth-century this technique was used by a number of engravers producing ornament prints....

Engraved Ornament project

Cupid, draw back your bow

Guest bloge entry by Bryony Bartlett-RawlingsFigure 1: V&A inventory number 29876.4Juan Dolívar after Jean Bérain the ElderPossibly after a tapestry design by Jean Bérain...

Engraved Ornament project

Ornament for presentation and collection

Guest blog entry by Bryony Bartlett-RawlingsThe evolution of print publishing around the end of the fifteenth century is closely intertwined with the development of ornament...

Engraved Ornament project

Still life

Guest blog entry by Bryony Bartlett-RawlingsA number of ornament engravings in the V&A collection dating to the 16th- and 17th centuries by Dutch and Flemish printmakers...

Engraved Ornament project

‘Monuments of your Love built up to the Cloudes…’ [1]

Guest blog entry byBryony Bartlett-RawlingsDuring the first weekend of June 2012 Britain will embrace a mood of celebration as it celebrates the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The...

Engraved Ornament project

Mermaids

Guest blog entry: Bryony Bartlett-RawlingsMermaids, Mermen and other fantastical creatures of the sea have featured heavily in our folklore for centuries. The first stories of...