Autograph Letter Signed from the Victorian wood engraver and printer Edmund Evans to the connoisseur George Clulow, discussing an engraving 'in alto relievo' by William Home Lizars from a painting by John Watson. With copy of the engraving.

Plate: Portrait of 'Peter Morris, M.D. | Printed at the Ballantyne Press'. 'Painted by John Watson. Engraved in alto relievo by W. Lizars.' Dimensions of plate 10.5 x 9.5cm., on 12mo leaf. The frontispiece to the first volume of the 1819 Ballantyne edition of Lockhart's 'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk'. In fair condition, on foxed paper. Letter: 4pp., 12mo. On bifolium. Fair, on aged paper, with remains of stub adhering to margin. A wonderfully knowledgeable letter, providing an insight into a vanished world of craftsmanship and connoisseurship, with a continuity destroyed by the Great War. (For example, Evans is confident that he can locate the original plate, despite the fact that it was engraved sixty-five years before.) Evans begins his letter: 'Dear Mr. Clulow | I am quite puzzled about the portrait in your book - it is evidently printed - as they say, by Letter press process - and it is engraved after the fashion of wood engraving (White out of Black) - being done before the days of photography, or any of the Electrotyping processes it cannot have been transformed in any way from a copper plate - though it is engraved after the style of plate engraving of that date - William Harvey did his large woodcut of Dentatus in the same style in imitation of plate[,] Engraving crosslines with a dot in the centre.' Here he makes an explanatory drawing. It appears to him that the plate is 'simply engraved on copper instead of Wood by Lizars who was a plate Engraver and could of course use the Graver as well - if not better than most Wood Engravers, and could certainly draw better'. He discusses, in the body of the letter and in a footnote (which points out Lizars' use of the phrase 'had the time permitted'), he discusses Lizar's reasons for 'calling this an invention', and gives an drawing illustrating how Lizars 'outlined the cross-lines to keep them shart as a Wood Engraver would do'. He considers that the engraving is 'really very beautifully engraved and if printed well would be a fine piece of work.' He asks if he should 'try if I can get the plate? I dare say it is in existence, I have an engraver - a Scotchman - (a Macintosh,) I think through him I might be able to trace it'. He assures Clulow that he will guard his book, adding: 'I am - as you, evidently are, much interested in this sort of thing and I should not mind the trouble it will take to try and get the plate.' A postscript reads: 'As it was printed for Blackwoods I will write to them - for I know them very well'.