The Story of the House of Cassell
desideratum was a means for the rapid engraving of drawings, pictures and photographs in light and shade. Messrs. Goupil, of Paris, were perhaps the first to introduce such a system, but it was Meisenbach's process, coming a little later, which worked the revolution. In all the variety of its forms, it has retained even to this day the name of the inventor; the "half-tone" process is still sometimes called the "Meisenbach" process. He it was who made a commercial possibility of something which had been hitherto an interesting chemical and mechanical curiosity. The advances since his time have been many and great, but they have not always gone in the direction of improved quality. At first it was possible to get a process block made in a fortnight, then in a week, then in two or three days. Now, if need be, one can be obtained in an hour or two.
In the 'eighties it was customary in the House to allow a month for the production of a wood-engraving for a magazine—a fortnight for the drawing, and a fortnight for the cutting of the drawing on the wood. As the drawing was done directly on the wood block, the act of engraving cut it all away, and if the engraver scamped his work nothing was easier than to attribute the fault to the artist. It was therefore a great advantage when the photograph came into the field, for by its aid a drawing made on paper could be transferred to the wood block. This device put an end to the method of drawing on the wood itself. It possessed the further advantage of saving the drawing, which could now be permanently preserved and was valuable for reference as the engraver proceeded with his task. Among the most successful of the draughtsmen on wood were men whose names figure prominently on the roll of the Royal Academy—Fred Walker, Sir Hubert Herkomer, Sir Luke Fildes, Sir Edward Poynter, J. W. North, Henry Woods, W. F. Yeames, and Sir John Gilbert, while other distinguished artists were George du Maurier, A. B. Houghton, and George Friswell. All these contributed to Cassell's publications.
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