PREFACE
VERY book that I have seen,
purporting to be a beginner's manual, and dealing with the technique
of any art of which I had hoped to acquire the rudiments, has baffled
me by unimportant and extraneous information. There would be the
history of the art, the methods used by various ancient practitioners
and the evolution of processes and formulae with ingredients
mentioned in such obsolete terms that no modern compounder of
prescriptions could make head or tail of them - all before one got an
inkling of the actual procedure. The idea back of this sort of thing
seemingly is to impress the reader with the author's erudition, and
at the same time to confound the poor novice to the point of
distraction - in short, to discourage him. My experience in this line
has been such that I determined if ever I had a hand in imparting the
technique of woodcutting, the initial steps would be over a path
cleared ruthlessly of dead facts and fictions - of matter which only
an old hand at the game should want to know, and which could be
acquired in the by-paths of one's career.
I have assumed that this book will be read chiefly
by people who want to make woodcuts, and I have tried to keep in mind
the handicaps of those who live far from the sources of the tools and
materials of the art. For their benefit the names of manufacturers
and suppliers and their addresses are appended.
It is suggested to those who are interested in
woodcuts rather than in the actual practice of woodcutting, and who
may resent being thrown into the subject so violently, that they
attack first the chapter called 'After Words'; it is an
introduction.
