12ALAN DAVIS

Technology

In a letter to the weekly magazineTit-Bits dated 31March 1888 the humblebicycle bore the full force of one of Ruskinrsquos most vitriolic protests

I not only object but am quite prepared to spend all my best lsquobad languagersquo inreprobation of the bi- tri- and 4ndash5ndash6 or 7 cycles and every other contrivanceand invention for superseding human feet on Godrsquos ground Towalk to run toleap and to dance are the virtues of the human body and neither to stride onstilts wriggle on wheels or dangle on ropes and nothing in the training of thehuman mind with the body will ever supersede the appointed Godrsquos ways ofslow walking and hard working (xxxiv617)

If we were to take this diatribe seriously the horse-drawn carriage (a favour-ite form of transport for Ruskin) ought to be similarly dismissed as might theboat (another favourite) It would be easy to find other statements of simi-larly irascible tone and by careful selection build up a picture of a crankyreactionary anti-technological Ruskin But it would be entirely misleadingThe letter quoted above for example was written late in Ruskinrsquos lifefollowing a number of mental breakdowns and not long before his finalcatastrophic mental collapse of 1889 Yet within its curmudgeonly state-ments can be found echoes of key elements of Ruskinrsquos lifelong engagementwith technology which at its best was neither absurd nor eccentric andwhich began early1 (When the sixteen-year-old Ruskin visited the Alps in1835 he equipped himself not only with a geological hammer but also with ahomemade cyanometer whose readings of the skyrsquos blueness he recorded inhis diary see xxxv152) In fact Ruskin welcomed technological innovationwhere he found it helpful and life-enhancing but his primary concerns werewith fundamental issues of living working and the way we perceive ourrelation to the world ndash not with technological advance in itself In RobinHoltrsquos words Ruskin encourages a life lsquoorganically rather than mechanicallyconstructedrsquo he lsquotakes machines seriously recognising in them a power thathas potential but that has become something uncheckedrsquo2

170

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The approach adopted in this essay is based on the premise that Ruskinrsquosopinions are best understood (and of greatest value) in technological con-texts where he was himself highly experienced directly involved and expertrather than merely an onlooker and commentator To that end strongemphasis is placed on the fields of photography and printmaking no attemptis made to catalogue the full breadth of Ruskinrsquos responses to the range oftechnological issues that confronted himWe begin by considering his response in Fors Clavigera to the reporting

(on 7 April 1870) of the successful completion of a telegraph link to India

That telegraphic signalling was a discovery and conceivably some day may bea useful one And there was some excuse for your being a little proud whenabout last sixth of April you knotted a copper wire all the way to Bombayand flashed a message along it and back

But what was the message and what the answer Is India the better for whatyou said to her Are you the better for what she replied (xxvii85)

Ruskin was not unimpressed by the achievement but clearly had little inter-est in it for its own sakeWhat concerned himwas how it might be employedits moral implication whether it availed towards life in its richest senseWhat should be said is far more important than the technology employed insaying it These themes recur regardless of the type of technology involvedRuskin was for example consistently critical of the railways though he wasaware of the technological triumph of the design and construction of thesteam locomotive and was sensitive to the way it appeared to dwarf theimportance of the things he most valued

I cannot express the amazed awe the crushed humility with which I sometimeswatch a locomotive take its breath at a railway station and think what workthere is in its bars and wheels and what manner of men they must be who digbrown iron-stone out of the ground and forge it into that What wouldthemenwho thought out this ndashwho beat it out who touched it into its polishedcalm of power who set it to its appointed task and triumphantly saw it fulfilthis task to the utmost of their will ndash feel or think about this weak hand of minetimidly leading a little stain of water-colour which I cannot manage into animperfect shadow of something else ndashmere failure in every motion and endlessdisappointment what I repeat would these Iron-dominant Genii think of meand what ought I to think of them (xix60ndash61)

Yet despite his recognition of the scale of the technological achievement hewould gladly have destroyed lsquomost of the railroads in England and all therailroads in Walesrsquo (xxvii15) because (to quote merely one reason)

No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us onewhit stronger happier or wiser There was always more in the world

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than men could see walked they ever so slowly they will see it no betterfor going fast (v380ndash1)

As Jeffrey Richards observes in his comprehensive analysis of Ruskin and therailways Ruskin rejected the assumption that advance in technology isautomatically beneficial lsquoIf anything Ruskin sees it as obscuring the sourcesof true happinessrsquo3 Richards identifies three principal reasons for Ruskinrsquoscriticism of the railway lsquoIt interfered with the process of detailed observa-tion it encouraged mental torpor and it destroyed the very scenery that thetraveller should be observingrsquo4 Indeed Ruskin did not consider going byrailroad to be lsquotravellingrsquo at all lsquoit is merely ldquobeing sentrdquo to a place and verylittle different from becoming a parcelrsquo (v370) It compared poorly with hisfavourite mode of travel (the horse-drawn carriage) which he argued didnot involve a miserable suspension of real living but offered a life-enrichingextension of it He made one of his most memorable remarks about therailways on one wild March day in 1865 as he looked out of his windowcontemplating the leaves and bits of straw being blown by the wind and thepuffs of steam from the railway carrying passengers to Folkestone

In the general effect of these various passages and passengers as seen frommy quiet room they look all very much alike One begins seriously toquestion with oneself whether those passengers by the Folkestone train arein truth one whit more in a hurry than the dead leaves The differenceconsists of course in the said passengers knowing where they are going toand why and having resolved to go there ndash which indeed as far asFolkestone may perhaps properly distinguish them from the leaves butwill it distinguish them any farther Do many of them know what they aregoing to Folkestone for ndash what they are going anywhere for and where atlast by sum of all the daysrsquo journeys of which this glittering transit is onethey are going for peace For if they know not this certainly they are nomoremaking haste than the straws are (xix95ndash6)

That contrast between the advanced technology of the doing and the ques-tionable nature of what is being done is observed again with heavy irony inLetter 5 of Fors Clavigera (1871)

To talk at a distance when you have nothing to say though you were ever sonear to go fast from this place to that with nothing to do either at one or theother these are powers certainly (xxvii86ndash7)

Ruskin understood that the pace of technological progress in communica-tion locomotion and industry was far outstripping the moral and spiritualdevelopment of human nature lsquoBase war lying policy thoughtless crueltysenseless improvidence have been up to this hour as characteristic of

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mankind as they were in the earliest periods so that we must either be drivento doubt of human progress at all or look upon it as in its very earliest stagersquo(xi197) Despite such profound reservations Ruskin used the railwaysexplaining why in Letter 49 of Fors Clavigera (1875) lsquoI use everything thatcomes within reach of me The wisdom of life is in preventing all the evilwe can and using what is inevitable to the best purpose I am perfectlyready even to construct a railroad when I think one necessaryrsquo (xxviii247)It is not then that Ruskin fails to see the benefits of technological advance

rather he highlights the discrepancy between moral and technological pro-gress and warns that moral and spiritual losses may accompany the techno-logical gains He is reluctant to recommend the use of the microscope forexample lsquoI do not often invite my readers to use a microscope but for onceand for a little while we will take the tormenting aid of itrsquo (xv405) Heexplained his position in a letter of 1878 lsquothe first vital principle is that manis intended to observe with his eyes and mind not with microscope andknifersquo (xxvxxx) Ruskin is concerned that the restricted vision offered by themicroscope will lead to the loss of contextual awareness and being incom-plete will take us further from the truth rather than closer to it

[T]he use of instruments for exaggerating the powers of sight necessarilydeprives us of the best pleasures of sight A flower is to be watched as itgrows in its association with the earth the air and the dew its leaves are tobe seen as they expand in sunshine its colours as they embroider the field orillumine the forest Dissect or magnify them and all you discover or learn atlast will be that oaks roses and daisies are all made of fibres and bubblesand these again of charcoal and water but for all their peeping and probingnobody knows how (xxxv430)

This insistence on the importance of such holistic perception anticipatesaspects of the philosophy of A N Whitehead where lsquoevery entity is onlyto be understood in terms of the way in which it is interwoven with the rest ofthe universersquo5

The use of the microscope ndash where technology is employed to enhancevision ndash highlights an issue of special importance to Ruskin clarity ofperception and the expression of what is perceived This is not merely amatter of developing the right lenses

You do not see with the lens of the eye You see through that and by means ofthat but you see with the soul of the eye Sight is an absolutely spiritualphenomenon (xxii194ndash5)

Further and famously (and most significantly in the present context) lsquothegreatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something andtell what it saw in a plain wayrsquo (v333) Given that intensity of emphasis we

Technology

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should expect to find Ruskinrsquos attitude to technology particularly revealingwhere it concerns the visual And indeed it is here that we find Ruskinengaging most deeply with the technologies appropriate to his work activelyinvolved with the making of photographs engravings book illustrationsand the large diagrams used as teaching aids in his lectures

Ruskin recalled in Praeterita how in his last days as an Oxford under-graduate he had learned of lsquothe original experiments of Daguerrersquo andfancied that the plates sent to him from Paris at that time may have beenlsquothe first sent to Englandrsquo (xxxv372) They were not but the exact dateshardly matter the point is that Ruskin involved himself in the new inventionof photography very early He first recognised its power in Venice in 1845writing enthusiastically to his father

I have been lucky enough to get some most beautiful Daguerreotypes ofthe palaces I have been trying to draw and certainly Daguerreotypes taken bythis vivid sunlight are glorious things It is very nearly the same thing as carryingoff the palace itself every chip of stone and stain is there and of course there isnomistake about proportions It is a noble invention and any onewho hasworked and blundered and stammered as I have done for four days and thensees the thing he has been trying to do so long in vain done perfectly andfaultlessly in half a minute wonrsquot abuse it afterwards (iii210 n)

Photographyrsquos potential for recording architectural treasures threatened byrestoration was not lost on him lsquoIt is certainly the most marvellous inventionof the century given us I think just in time to save some evidence from the greatpublic of wreckersrsquo (iii210 n) He speedily acquired equipment for makingDaguerreotypes and his manservant John Hobbs became responsible forusing it Ruskin later recalled that he had taken lsquothe first image of theMatterhorn as also of the aiguilles of Chamouni ever drawn by the sunrsquo(xxxv452ndash3) and although that claim may be inaccurate6 it indicates howinvolved Ruskin became in these early developments and how keen he was touse photography in his alpine studies He accumulated a large collection ofDaguerreotypes (many still survive) and photography significantly influencedthe development of his thought while Ruskin dismissed the idea that photo-graphymight supersedefine art it undeniably affectedhis approach todrawingas Ray Haslam has explained7 According to Lindsay Smith Ruskinrsquos use ofphotography influenced the construction of The Stones of Venice and activelystrengthened his wish to document the details of Venetian architecture8 Smithalso observes that photography provided lsquoa new reference point against whichRuskinmightmeasure Turnerrsquos ldquotruth to naturerdquorsquo9Ruskin notes for examplethat lsquoa delicately taken photograph of a truly Turnerian subject is farmore likeTurner in the drawing than it is to the work of any other artistrsquo (vi82)

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Photography developed rapidly during the years Ruskin was concernedwith it and his perception of its value gradually changed Several strands ofhis involvement can be identified ndash for example the use of photography forgathering lsquomemoranda of the facts of naturersquo (v9) and its value for recordingarchitecture under threat of restoration as already mentioned ndash thoughalways for Ruskin it was a means of representing static facts rather thanexpressing atmosphere or motion Also as the technology progressedbeyond the limitations of the Daguerreotype (which lacked the capacity forduplication) he keenly anticipated its potential for reproducing works of artand illustrating books lsquoI believe a new era is opening to us in the art ofillustrationrsquo he wrote in 1853 (x356) But despite his enthusiasm he wasalways aware of the problematic character of photographyrsquos mechanisticrepresentation of the world photographic images lack he noted lsquothe veryvirtue by which the work of human mind chiefly rises above any

mechanical means that ever have been or may be invented Loversquo (iii169)By the mid 1850s he was expressing reservations about photographicdistortion photography lsquoeither exaggerates shadows or loses detail in thelightsrsquo (vi82) and fails to give a truthful image of forms set against a brightsky (xv73) By the 1860s he had recognised that photographs could beseriously misleading lsquoThey are popularly supposed to be ldquotruerdquo and atthe worst they are so in the sense in which an echo is true to a conversationof which it omits the most important syllables and reduplicates the restrsquo(xix150) Most significantly the photograph of a landscape (or of a workof art) could yield little of value he advised his reader

until you have given the appointed price in your own attention and toil Andwhen once you have paid this price you will not care for photographs oflandscape (xx165)

It was a matter of how fully we engage with the world There was notechnological shortcut to experiencing the kind of epiphany that Ruskinassociated with his experience of drawing an aspen at Fontainebleau in1842 ndash a remembered incident that with hindsight came to symbolisethe dawn of his understanding of the value of seeing and drawing trulyand of the crucial role that the imagination played in that process(xxxv314) (The factual accuracy of Ruskinrsquos recollection in Praeteritamay reasonably be questioned (see for example Hilton 1 68) but hisaccount of the incident whether real or imagined remains significant asan indicator of the importance he came to invest in the act of accuratedrawing as an essential aid to seeing) The taking of a photograph couldrecord facts of a certain type it could not transform experience in theway that drawing could

Technology

175

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So although Ruskin employed photographic methods to illustrate his laterpublications accepting the benefit of advances in photographic reproduc-tion his enthusiasm for the photographic worldview eventually faded In1868 he wrote to the photographer Julia Cameron lsquoFifteen years ago I kneweverything that the photograph could and could not do ndash I have long ceasedto take the slightest interest in itrsquo (xxxvii734) When it came to the repro-duction of paintings there was no question about the matter

[A] square inch of manrsquos engraving is worth all the photographs that ever weredipped in acid photography can do against line engraving just whatMadame Tussaudrsquos wax-work can do against sculpture That and no more

(xix89)

Printmaking (etching line engraving mezzotint engraving wood engrav-ing and lithography) was the branch of technology about which Ruskinwas most fully informed and with which he was most deeply involved formost of his active adult life Some technical printmaking terms and conceptsshould be understood at the outset There is for example an importantdistinction between etching line engraving and mezzotint on the one handand wood engraving on the other The former are intaglio techniqueswhereby marks are etched or cut into a flat metal surface which when filledwith ink and the surface wiped clean is transferred onto paper under greatpressure The incised marks therefore print black By contrast woodengravings are printed from the inked surface of a wooden block ndash theareas that are to be white in the final printed image having been cut awayThis means that wood engravings can be easily printed alongside letter-press as indeed they often are in Ruskinrsquos books Intaglio etchings andengravings need to be printed in a different kind of press and are included inRuskinrsquos books as separate lsquoplatesrsquo The range of techniques required for theillustrations to Ruskinrsquos later books ndashAratra Pentelici (1872) for instance ndashwas extended to include photographic methods such as lsquoautotypersquo but itshould be stressed that engraving techniques never lost their primary impor-tance for Ruskin

Between 1849 and 1860 alone Ruskin was responsible for producingmore than 150 etched engraved and lithographed plates and more than200 wood engravings for The Seven Lamps of Architecture The Stones ofVenice and Modern Painters ndash a startlingly high average production rateof about one new print every ten days over an eleven-year period Thisstatistic alone marks out printmaking as a technological engagement ofenormous significance in Ruskinrsquos work He etched some of the finest plateshimself beginning with the innovative soft-ground etchings for The SevenLamps (1849) lsquobitten (the last of them in my washhand basin ) by

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myself with savage carelessnessrsquo (viii15) The soft ground etching techniquelsquowas old-fashioned by 1849 yet in [Ruskinrsquos] hands it proved capable ofproducing images of great originalityrsquo10 But his Seven Lamps plates thoughbrilliantly expressive failed to withstand the practical demands of the print-ing process and in the 1850s Ruskin lsquodeeply influenced by his study ofTurnerrsquos etched work in the Liber Studiorumrsquo11 took Turnerrsquos model forhis ideal etching in pure line (sometimes with the addition ofmezzotint by anengraver) and restricting the use of multiple bitingMost of the plates in Ruskinrsquos books were made in collaboration with

highly skilled professional engravers under Ruskinrsquos careful supervisionPrintmaking however was far more important to Ruskin than the mereneed for book illustrations might suggest The technical difficulties theweeks of labour involved in the engraving of a steel plate the permanenceof the result and the potential for printing hundreds or thousands of impres-sions ndash these placed a heavy responsibility on the printmaker lsquo[Where] willyou look for a chance of saying something nobly if it is not herersquo Ruskinasked (xix101) The symbolic character of the act of engraving is crucial toan understanding of Ruskinrsquos approach to it and invites comparison withBlake who in Plate 11 of his Job series of engravings lsquoclearly intendsthe means of producing the plate to be an essential part of the symbolicstructurersquo12 The engraverrsquos burin13 was for Ruskin as for Blake the lsquoironpenrsquo of Job

Oh that my words were now written Oh that they were printed in a book Thatthey were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever (Job 1923ndash24)

This symbolic conception of engraving was not a mere aesthetic phantasmDriven by a moral impulse it was informed by more than a decade ofRuskinrsquos involvement in the practicalities of ink paper etching groundsacid steel plates and wood blocks together with detailed consultation andproof-checking with his engravers The importance of engraving in Ruskinrsquoswork is easy to miss todayModern Painters Seven Lamps and The Stonesof Venice are usually read in late editions illustrated by reproductions of theoriginal plates ndash but the reproduction process introduces a layer of fog thatoften defeats Ruskinrsquos intention to stretch his readerrsquos visual perceptionbeyond the ordinary Significant nuances and subtleties of gradation thatRuskin intended his reader to see may not be visible in reproductions of theengravingsFor Ruskin the multiplicability of engravings created a potentially serious

moral predicament arising from the ability of the cheap illustration topenetrate into the home and influence large numbers of people at an intimatelevel through continual exposure

Technology

177

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[This] multipliable work will pass through thousand thousand handsstrengthen and inform innumerable souls if it be worthy vivify the folly ofthousands if unworthy Remember also it will mix in the very closest mannerin domestic life (xix101)

Unfortunately most of the engravers of Ruskinrsquos day though immenselyskilled and working under difficult conditions for long periods of time forlittle reward were in Ruskinrsquos opinion not employed in lsquosaying somethingnoblyrsquo at all Despite the intervention of Turner who had effectively trained aschool of engravers to make prints after his works under his personal super-vision engravers tended to work to a formula lsquoa tradition regulated everymethod of interpretation and leaving nothing to the instinct and feeling ofthe workman prescribed for him where to put thick lines and thin lines andlozenges with dots in the middlersquo14 This was hopelessly ill-matched toRuskinrsquos ambition to demonstrate his organic vision of the natural worldor to interpret Turnerrsquos work or the finest architecture In works such as TheStones of Venice and the later volumes of Modern Painters Ruskin wasdriven to urge his engravers to new heights of expression and representation

We can understand the character of his intention and judge the extent ofhis success by considering Figure 9 the upper half of which reproduces anillustration from Modern Painters (vii128) It was engraved by J CArmytage after a portion of a Turner watercolour15 and we may compareit with the same portion of the engraving that J TWillmore hadmade underTurnerrsquos supervision and published with his approval in 1828 (see the lowerhalf of Illustration 9) The contrast is startling Willmore used patterns oflines that do little more than establish tone and a crude sense of texturewhereas Armytage under Ruskinrsquos supervision has portrayed a richness ofnuance in Turnerrsquos watercolour that is completely absent from Willmorersquosengraving These differences are crucial to Ruskinrsquos arguments about thetruth to nature of Turner and the penetrating capability of his visual imagi-nation Admittedly the comparison is an unfair one Armytage worked on alarger scale and on steel whereas Willmore had worked on copper alsofiner lines could be engraved in the hardermetal which had greater resistancetowear during printing But the important point is that Ruskinwaswilling touse any technological means to achieve the accurate illustration of Turnerrsquoswork to an appropriate degree of lsquofinishrsquo ndash a word which is central to hisapproach to engraving Merely covering the paper with decorative patternsof lines (as in theWillmore engraving) has no part to play in Ruskinrsquos conceptof lsquofinishrsquo True lsquofinishrsquo for Ruskin lsquodoes not consist in smoothing orpolishing but in the completeness of the expression of ideasrsquo (v155 originalemphasis) It is a matter of lsquotelling more truthrsquo (v168) There can be lsquonorefinement of executionwhere there is no thought and never imagine there

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is reason to be proud of anything that can be accomplished by patience andsand-paperrsquo (x199) For Ruskin the engraverrsquos task was to study everynuance in the work at hand (a Turner watercolour say) and to create aseries of engraved lines most closely analogous to the tones colours andtextures of the original Every line should be loaded with meaning such thatthe final result was not a construct of habit tradition and formula but animaginative and truthful creation by a thoughtful and sensitive interpreter

Figure 9Comparison of engravings of JMW TurnerrsquosBy the Brook-side (Richmond from theMoors made for Turnerrsquos England and Wales series of engravings) by J C Armytage underRuskinrsquos supervision (above) and by J T Willmore under Turnerrsquos supervision (below)

Technology

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Ruskin never lost his heightened sense of the value of engraving JohnHayman has suggested that this preoccupation may have been nostalgic innature16 but this is to overlook the forward-looking character of Ruskinrsquosapproach ndash towards a future progressive school of engraving which lsquoisPhoenician in immortality and fears no firersquo (xix89) Ruskinrsquos hopes how-ever were not realised from a commercial point of view photomechanicalprocesses would increasingly dominate the reproduction of art and the ArtJournal for long reliant on the use of steel-engraved plates for its mostprestigious illustrations would publish its final steel engraving in 1890 Itis part of Ruskinrsquos tragedy that by the time he was best equipped to influencethe future of engraving its technology was on the verge of becoming oldfashioned and commercially unattractive By contrast the exploitation ofwood engraving during the period was of a character that made Ruskindeeply unsympathetic to it ndash a subject to which it is now necessary to turnfor it illuminates Ruskinrsquos concerns particularly well

In the middle of the nineteenth century a school of wood engraving arosein Great Britain that would come to dominate the illustration of books andmagazines during the period Broadly gathered under an umbrella of lsquoTheSixtiesrsquo it could be said to have begun in the middle of the 1850s and to havecome to an end in the early 1870s It depended entirely on the development ofan astonishing level of expertise nurtured in workshops such as those of theDalziel Brothers17 and it attracted original work by (among many others)most of the leading artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelites Yet Ruskinignored almost all the wood-engraved art of this period and when he didmention it it was usually with disdain It was not that Ruskin deplored woodengraving in itself quite the contrary As usual it was the use to which thetechnology was applied that created the problem

The basic processes of making a Sixties wood engraving are simple todescribe though difficult to do The artist drew a design on the prepared flatsurface of the wood block and passed the result to the engraver who pro-ceeded to cut away the wood around the lines drawn by the artist The ideawas to leave the design standing in relief so that when the surface of the blockwas inked and pressed onto paper the designwould be printed on the paper inreverse (This process necessarily involved the destruction of the originaldrawing on the block though it was not long before techniques were devel-oped which allowed the engraver to work with a photograph of the design onthe block ndash thereby preserving the original drawing) The engravers developedextraordinary degrees of skill in cutting away the wood amid the mostintricate pencilled entanglements so as to mimic the touch of the artistThey were so successful that most wood-engraved illustrations of the Sixtieslook verymuch like pen and ink sketches and notmuch likewood engravings

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It is here with the idea that the typical Sixties wood engraving tried toappear to be something else (a pen and ink sketch) that Ruskinrsquos chiefobjections lay Lines scrawled in seconds by the artist on the woodblockrequired hours or days of painstaking labour by the wood engraver in orderto make the final print seem to be what it was not Sixties wood engravingwas then a process rooted in artistic impropriety Ruskin understandingthis completely damned it with ironic praise lsquoif we accept its false condi-tions nothing can surpass the cleverness of our own school of Dalzielrsquo(xix155) This is not to say that Ruskin himself did not take advantage ofthe expertise of the wood engravers of his day the pages of the later volumesof Modern Painters (1856ndash60) and The Elements of Drawing (1857) forinstance are liberally sprinkled with wood-engraved reproductions of hisown sketches made according to the same lsquofalse conditionsrsquo Like his use ofthe railways it was a choice driven by expediency the wood engravings wereneeded to make essential visual points in his books not to pose as examplesof fine wood-engraved artRuskinrsquos central ideas on the art of wood engraving are most compre-

hensively stated in the set of Oxford lectures published as AriadneFlorentina (1876) They broadly follow from the lsquoabstract principle ofdoing with each material what it is best fitted to dorsquo (xix136) ndash a conceptrooted in Ruskinrsquos organic vision of the natural world where all things havea designed purpose and function in relation to the whole Ruskin explainsthe symbolic nature of the wood-engraverrsquos basic tool ndash lsquoa solid plough-sharersquo (xxii348) ndash which cuts a v-shaped furrow into the surface of theblock If greater pressure is applied the tool cuts a deeper wider groovewith less pressure the cut is shallower and finer Because it is the surface ofthe block that carries the ink (the block is printed in the same way asletterpress) furrows cut by the engraver will appear in the final print aswhite lines ndash uninked paper ndash whose width is modulated by the engraverrsquostouch To produce a black printed line the engraver must cut away thewood on either side of the artistrsquos pen stroke leaving a ridge standing inrelief Ruskin explains that this has significant consequences lsquoit requiresextreme precision and skill to leave a thin dark line and when left it will bequickly beaten down by a careless printer Therefore the virtue of woodengraving is to exhibit the qualities and power of thick linesrsquo (xxii350) Theengraver then needs to be very sensitive to the strength durability andelasticity of his material ndash and so by implication does the artist whodrew the image (In due course it became common practice to print fromelectrotype facsimiles that were more durable than the original engravedwoodblocks but the aesthetic impression of weakness created by very thinwood-engraved black lines remained)

Technology

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So a well-designed wood engraving requires the delicate cutting of care-fully chosen grooves and ridges in sympathy with the restrictions of themedium Ruskin was keenly aware that the concept of using a wood engrav-ing to reproduce a sketch necessarily implies an abuse of the medium lsquowhatappears to you a sketch on wood is not so at all but a most laborious andcareful imitation of a sketch on paper [And] so far as we do in reality try toproduce effects of sketching in wood our work is wrongrsquo (xxii349) Thiswrongness is most clearly seen in the use of cross-hatching ndash typically a signof failure in the artistrsquos sympathy with the requirements of the medium andthe task of the engraver The draughtsman with his pen may dash in an areaof cross-hatched shading in seconds leaving a network of tiny lozenge-shapedwhite spaces which the engravermust laboriously cut out with carefulprecision to maintain the illusion of the free sketch if Ruskin calculateslsquoI carelessly draw six strokes with my pen across other six I produce twenty-five interstices each of which will need at least six perhaps twenty carefultouches of the burin to clear out ndash say ten for an average and I demand twohundred and fifty exquisitely precise touches frommy engraver to render tencareless ones of mine And Mrs Beecher Stowe and the North Americansfancy they have abolished slaveryrsquo (xxii359ndash60)

Ruskinrsquos objections concerned the wellbeing of both engraver and viewerThe engraver ndash already working long hours under difficult conditions ndash wasrequired slavishly to follow the requirements of the artist with painstakingcraftsmanship but with relatively little thought of his own while the viewerwas invited to enjoy an image that was created with no feeling for therightness of the medium ndash or perhaps worse to be unaware of the require-ments of the medium at all It is telling that Ruskin seems to have had noquarrel with the various technological advances made during the Sixtiessuch as the replacement of the artistrsquos original drawing on the block by aphotographic reproduction or the manufacture of metal electrotype facsi-miles of the engraved woodblock to facilitate the printing process Hisobjections lay elsewhere

Ruskinrsquos dismissal of Sixties wood engraving led him to overlook a smallamount of wood-engraved work that closely adhered to his principles (Sucha tremendous quantity of wood-engraved illustration was generated in theperiod that it was one supposes inevitable that hewouldmiss the few that hewould have found heartening) One such print is Frederick Sandysrsquos UntilHer Death (Figure 10) published in Good Words in 1863 whichillustrates Ruskinrsquos principles admirably The accompanying detail of thewomanrsquos hair in the lower half of Figure 10 reveals the full extent of thesensitivity of the design and of its engraving Themarks are conceived not aspen strokes but as cuts made by the engraverrsquos burin Through each white

alan davis

182

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line articulating the tresses of hair we feel the sure and delicate touch of theengraverrsquos tool on the woodblock widening or narrowing the groove as theapplied pressure changes We sense the movement of the tool as it cutsthrough the wood simultaneously responding not only to the guidance ofthe artistrsquos design but to the need for harmony with the other markings andto the engraverrsquos intuitive feel for the elastic properties of the material The

Figure 10 Wood engraving after Frederick Sandysrsquos Until Her Death Good Words 1863(above) with enlarged detail (below)

Technology

183

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design of the artist and the work of the engraver operate together in a kind ofsymbiotic relationship ndash a specific application of Ruskinrsquos Law of Help(vii203ndash216) and a symbol of organic unity As Ruskin explained whenwriting about Hans Holbeinrsquos series of wood engravings The Dance ofDeath it is

impossible to say of any standard old woodcut whether the draughtsmanengraved it himself or not I should imagine from the character and subtletyof the touch that every line of the Dance of Death had been engravedby Holbein we know it was not and that there can be no certainty given byeven the finest pieces of wood execution of anything more than perfect har-mony between the designer and workman (xxii360)

This mutually helpful intent linking artist and engraver creatively togetheris largely missing in Sixties wood-engraved illustration and its absenceprimarily explains Ruskinrsquos dismissive attitude The Sixties wood engravercontributes his skill patience and determination but is permitted to bringlittle life of his own to the joint endeavour As ever with Ruskin it comesdown to this issue of life at its best with all its inherent richness of inter-linked helpful cooperation and he did not find it in the wood engravings ofthe Sixties They offended his principle of lsquorightness in work in my ownmind the foundation of every otherrsquo which he wished lsquoto be made plain ifnothing else isrsquo (xix388ndash9) This principle provides the key to understandingRuskinrsquos attitude to technology Working from an over-arching sense ofwhat God had made human beings fit for Ruskin was a strong advocatefor creative hand labour in general and the work of the thoughtful andcreative engraver was a perfect symbol of it As Stuart Eagles writes forRuskin only lsquocreative labour can be truly productive of human happinessfor only this type of labour considers the human being as an organism at onewith nature rather than as a machine seeking blasphemously to improveupon itrsquo18 The Guild of St George represents Ruskinrsquos attempt to frame amodel of society in which such an approach to creative labour is intrinsic

And so writing about Holbeinrsquos lsquoThe Last Furrowrsquo19 ndash one of the lsquobestwood engravings ever produced by artrsquo (xxii352) ndash Ruskin brings artprintmaking ploughing life and death together in a symbolic unity oftext image and purpose that makes it hard to know where one strand ofthought ends and another begins Engraver or ploughman The exact natureof the technology hardly matters What counts is the permanent value of alifersquos diligent and creative toil

The husbandman is old and gaunt and has passed his days not in speaking butpressing the iron into the ground And the payment for his lifersquos work is that heis clothed in rags and his feet are bare on the clods and he has no hat ndash but the

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brim of a hat only and his long unkempt grey hair comes through But all theair is full of warmth and of peace and beyond the village church there is atlast light indeed His horses lag in the furrow and his own limbs totter and failbut one comes to help him lsquoIt is a long fieldrsquo says Death lsquobut wersquoll get to theend of it to-day ndash you and Irsquo (xxii355)

NOTES

1 lsquoTechnologyrsquo is here interpreted in its broadest sense as the use of tools machinescrafts and systems to achieve desired ends (Thanks to Ray Haslam for hisinteresting observation that the word lsquotechnologyrsquo does not appear anywhere inthe Library Edition of Ruskinrsquos works) I am grateful to Sara Atwood RayHaslam and Francis OrsquoGorman for their invaluable suggestions about earlierdrafts of this essay

2 Robin Holt lsquoThe credit crisis and some gothic reliefrsquo The Ruskin Review andBulletin 51 (2009) 19ndash39 (30)

3 Jeffrey Richards lsquoThe Role of the Railwaysrsquo in Michael Wheeler ed Ruskin andEnvironment (Manchester Manchester University Press 1995) 123ndash43 (128)

4 Ibid 1355 A N Whitehead Essays in Science and Philosophy (London Rider 1948) 646 See StephenWildmanRuskin and the Daguerreotype (Lancaster Ruskin Library

2006) 11 n187 Ray Haslam lsquoRuskin Drawing and the Argument of the Lensrsquo The Ruskin

Review and Bulletin 21 (Michaelmas 2005) 17ndash24

Figure 11 The Last Furrow

Technology

185

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8 Lindsay Smith Victorian Photography Painting and Poetry (CambridgeCambridge University Press 1995) 77

9 Ibid 7810 Alan Davis lsquoldquoWhat I intended the plates to berdquo Ruskinrsquos etchings for The Seven

Lamps of Architecturersquo The Ruskin Review and Bulletin 11 (Lent term 2005)3ndash11 (5)

11 AlanDavis lsquoThe ldquodark cluerdquo and the Law ofHelp Ruskin Turner and theLiberStudiorumrsquo in Robert Hewison ed Ruskinrsquos Artists Studies in the VictorianVisual Economy (Aldershot Ashgate 2000) 31ndash51 (37)

12 Alan Davis lsquoJobrsquos ldquoIron Penrdquo Ruskinrsquos Use of Engraved Illustration in ModernPaintersrsquo in Michael Wheeler ed Time and Tide Ruskin Studies 1996(London Pilkington 1996) 98ndash116 (106)

13 The burin (or graver) is the tool with which an engraver cuts lines into the surfaceof a metal plate or woodblock

14 P G Hamerton Etching and Etchers (1876 rpt Wakefield EP Publishing1975) 17

15 lsquoRichmond from the Moorsrsquo made for Turnerrsquos England and Wales series ofengravings is reproduced in Eric Shanes Turnerrsquos England (London Cassell1990) 185

16 John Hayman John Ruskin and Switzerland (Ontario Wilfrid LaurierUniversity Press 1990) 9ndash10

17 Pronounced lsquoDee-ELrsquo18 Stuart Eagles After Ruskin The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian

Prophet 1870ndash1920 (Oxford Oxford University Press 2011) 3719 The tailpiece reproduces as Figure 11 a facsimile engraving by Arthur Burgess

after Holbein commissioned by Ruskin from the Dance of Death series

alan davis

186

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