Engraving and Process Work
The House was turning out such a number of illustrations every month that the stock of wood blocks and electrotypes numbered hundreds of thousands. This led to the compilation of a catalogue containing a print of every illustration owned by the House. It was a gigantic undertaking, and years were occupied in carrying it out. A vast stock of original drawings by artists, including men of the highest eminence, was accumulated every year, and annual sale exhibitions of the best of them were held, first in a room at La Belle Sauvage Yard, and later on in the Hall of the Cutlers' Company in Warwick Lane.
Few drawings are made to-day as compared with twenty years ago. The photographer has generally taken the place of the draughtsman, except for the illustration of stories, although there is still a distinct place left for him in furnishing illustrations for medical and other scientific works and in producing diagrammatic illustrations such as those in the "New Popular Educator" and in Mr. Wells's "Outline of History." Not often, either, do artists now make pilgrimages to draw sights and scenes afar. But in the pre-process days the House sent two men to the other side of the world to make drawings for "Picturesque Australasia," while to illustrate "The Picturesque Mediterranean" a staff of the best landscape painters, which included John MacWhirter, Sir Alfred East, Charles W. Wyllie, and W. H. J. Boot, was commissioned to make drawings of scenes in the midland sea. To-day, it is to be feared, the extra charm which drawing gives to an illustration is little appreciated, and scarcely anyone thinks of having a sketch made of any natural object or subject which can be rendered by photography. The variety and individuality of the old illustration have given place to excellences of a different sort. But for many people any mechanical "realism" secured by photography was dearly bought by the sacrifice of the qualities of temperament, taste, and skill that the older style of illustration exploited.
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