Creator
Abraham Bosse.
Title
Traicté des manieres de graver en taille douce sur l’airin.
Coverage
Paris:
Publisher
Chez ledit Bosse, en l’Isle du Palais, à la Rozerouge, deuant la Megisserie,
Date
1645.
Subject
Gift of Jeremy Norman.
Description
Abraham Bosse (1604–1676), a French Huguenot artist and printmaker, was a prolific and skilled etcher whose Traicté des manieres de graver (1645) was the first European manual on intaglio printmaking. Bosse describes the following etching process, step by step, including how to immerse the plate in an acid bath (as shown in the image here). This illustration also reminds us of the prevalence of children as workers in the hand-press period (and indeed, for long afterwards).
Source
From the collection of Rare Book School