Wood engravers exhibition focuses on 'detail' (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Wood engravers exhibition focuses on 'detail'

9:10am Sunday 13th November 2011 in Art By Adrian Mullen, Arts correspondent

AN EYE For Detail: Contemporary Relief Prints is the Society of Wood Engravers exhibition running at Brantwood’s Blue Gallery.

The highly-regarded society was formed in 1920 and has steadily built up an international reputation for excellence. It is the principal organisation and rallying point for those interested in the subject and a means for artists to exhibit their work. Its annual exhibition tours the country for most of the year, visiting prestigious galleries and the Coniston venue is delighted to have been chosen. Brantwood has interesting credentials for holding the exhibition as John Ruskin bought the house in 1871 from William James Linton, a wood engraver of considerable sensitivity. Linton was also a poet, an artist and book illustrator. His notoriety, however, came from his activities as an engraver and printer. From the upper floor of an outbuilding that he constructed at Brantwood, Linton produced a torrent of what was then seditious literature.

Most wood engravings tend to be closely worked and relatively small because the tools used are finely pointed. Because the finesse of wood engraving produces a particularly rich tonal range, wood engravings are usually, but by no means exclusively, black and white. Examples of the tools and methods used to produce wood engravings will be on display alongside the works.

An Eye for Detail is a selling exhibition and will be on display from November 14 until January 8, Wednesday to Sunday from 11am to 4.30pm. For further information telephone 015394-41396.