Incredible Hand Carved Works Of Art
Some of the most magnificent artwork are early printing negatives. Not printed, printing. Meticulously hand carved blocks of wood, called appropriately, woodcuts.
The detail is nearly beyond comprehension as the artist created an image in wood from his view of, eg., a nature scene with a cottage, in a meadow, with trees, the detail being so fine that one can see leaves. Other times, the artist has reproduced an existing picture or painting, which itself was ... hand done.
These blocks of wood were fastened into the printing mechanism in a manner identical to the individual characters (that were also wood) that were used to spell the words to be printed.
This was before lead became the foundation for this printing technique, it being possible to melt the lead and reuse it.
The AEDOK archive contains numerous examples of these printed works, some in excess of a foot square, as well as a few examples of the word cuts themselves, though smaller.
Naturally, we would be interested in anything in rock or clay, etc.