VOCABULARY TERM: ANAGLYPTOGRAPHY

Anaglyptography. A mechanical process of converting a three-dimensional design – an anaglyph – to a line drawing, or an engraved plate. The process, also called medallic engraving, requires a mechanical device similar to a ruling machine. Developed first in the United States in 1817, by Christian Gobrecht, later U.S. Mint engraver, modified somewhat in England in 1829, and independently invented in France in 1830, the process was relatively short lived. It was used, however, for engraving book illustrations and banknotes displaying small RELIEFS as design elements.

A three-dimensional relief item, as a medal, coin, seal, cameo – or its cast replica, pattern or negative – is fastened in the device. A tracing point is repeatedly played over the object’s surface, hundredths of an inch apart, while the design is transferred to either a drawing pen reproducing the design by multiple close-line drawings on paper, or to an etcher inscribing the line on a printing plate.

Anaglyptography – literally embossed writing – was popular 1831-61 but was replaced by the rise of photoengraving following the introduction of that graphic art process in 1880. Modern references to anaglyptography often refer to the technique as MEDAL-ENGRAVING or MEDALLION-ENGRAVING (but both these terms wrongly confuse the general public as a machine that engraves the modulated relief in dies).

Numismatic connection. In 1835 the inventor of the medallic engraver, then a die engraver at the Philadelphia Mint, Christian Gobrecht employed his device to transfer a glyptic design to the surface of a die for engraving a coin design. He did this by making an exact size model of the Liberty Seated device he had chosen to appear on the obverse of this coin.

Gobrecht set up his tracer to reproduce this design on the face of a smooth DIE BLANK properly coated with zinc oxide (CHINESE WHITE). The device drew the exact design on the die’s surface and he was able to create the modulated relief by engraving this design into the die. This is the only reported incidence of this technique in the numismatic field. Though highly attractive, the resulting design was somewhat stiff and mechanical looking.

. . .

Meanwhile in the early 1840s, Saxton returned to Philadelphia to work for the U.S. Mint. In addition to building new scales he built an even more improved anaglyptograph based on the tracing machine Gobrecht had used in 1835 for the Liberty Seated dollar. (Gobrecht was unable to use this for another coin design because he died in 1844).

Saxton’s machine was steam powered and automatic; an operator did not need to reset it constantly. It was used to prepare engravings for two books, published in 1842 and 1846, by the two assayers at the Philadelphia Mint, Jacob B. Eckfeldt (1803-1872) and William E. Du Bois (1810-1881). These were A Manual of Gold and Silver Coins of All Nations and New Varieties of Gold and Silver Coins, Counterfeit Coins, and Bullion.

Also two other Americans had taken an interest in anaglyptographic engravings, both steel banknote engravers, James W. Steel (1799-1879) and Waterman Lilly Ormsby (1809-1883). Both of these gentlemen had built or acquired medallic engraving machines.

Orsmby was a prominent banknote engraver, foe of forgers, founder of the Continental Bank Note Company, and author of a number of books on these subjects. He maintained that the greatest use of anaglyptographic engravings was – not for book illustrations – but for banknote vignettes. He reproduced anaglyptographic samples, described the process, but we are mostly indebted to him for illustrating his anaglyptograph machine in his 1852 book, A Description of the Present System of Bank Note Engraving.

A few books and journals were illustrated with anaglyptographic engravings in the U.S. after the Civil War, but the far larger use by then was banknote vignettes. Nevertheless, the process rapidly fell into disuse in the 1880s with the rise of photoengraving – making printers’ plates from photographic prints – with a continuous tone (as in colotype or heliotype), or a screened process (as in halftone).

Mechanical process. Gobrecht’s first engravings were made from paper impressions of embossed blocks. The original relief object is not used directly because the tracer must constantly ride its surface and possibly damage it. Instead, plaster casts were first employed, even shellacking the plaster to give additional surface strength.

Final solution was to make an ELECTROTYPE of the relief and use this as the actual object to come in contact with the tracer. The electrotype was also advantageous in that it provided the negative from which a positive drawing was obtained.

After the electrotype is fixed in position in the machine, the tracer is setup to cross over its surface. At the end of each path the machine is set to advance only a small distance for the next path. Some engravings exhibit as many as 200 lines per inch, so this setting would be 200th of an inch.

If the surface is completely flat, the etcher makes a straight line. The mechanism is such that when the tracer reaches a rise in relief, it will cause the etcher or drawing pen to deviate from that straight course in proportion to the height of the relief. The adjacent line will make a similar deviation in proportion to its relief. The accumulated effect of all the lines gives a somewhat topographic drawing of the object.

There are some technical aspects of anaglyptographic engravings. Most evident: the accumulated effect of ascending relief will be a closeness of many lines with a darkness to the drawing. The opposite holds true: the effect of descending relief will be widespread lines and a lightness in shading.

Also there is a point of entrance where the first line is drawn; and a point of exit where the last line appears. In most instances the point of entrance would be at 6 o’clock or 9 o’clock on a round object; this would provide horizontal or vertical lines respectively.

For artistic reasons if the operator had a choice he would choose a point of entrance somewhere between 4 and 8 o’clock on the side facing the portrait. This would provide a dark concentration of lines around the facial profile and a light shade areas at the back or top of the head, as if sunlight were falling from above and the face was outlined with a strong shadow.

Retouching. Some retouching was done by adding additional hand-engraved or hand-drawn lines. Most prevalent of these was at the point of exit where an arc was drawn to outline the object, or to add additional shading. A variety of additional shading was effected by adding crosslines, infrequently by solid shading.

Artistic effect. Anaglyptographic engravings had an advantage over freehand drawings in that they were somewhat more accurate to the original contours of the bas-relief object. But in comparison to the photographic process there was no contest and it is certainly understandable the process died with the rise of photoengraving. However, for the brief period it reigned in the mid-19th century it served well its purpose.

At best anaglyptography rendered a relief illustration suitable for printing, but the optical effect on the human eye was one of monotonous gray with a loss of the sharp angular detail so often desirable in small objects like coins and medals. Finally, the requirement for a pattern the tracer wouldn’t damage was a generation away from the original and a further loss of some detail.

Even so it served numismatics in a way no other technique has done: In copying medal designs for printed illustrations, in one instance of aiding a coin die to be engraved, and the engraving process for banknote vignettes for over half a century!
CLASS 14

REFERENCES:

{1972} Gentleman (David) Design in Miniature. New York: Watson-Guptill. 104 pages, illus.COINS, pp 10-19; ANAGLPYTOGRAPHY, pp 90-93.

{1838} Nolte (Vincent Otto) Memorial of Facts Connected with the History of Medallic Engraving and the Process of M. Collas. London: Charles Tilt. 20 pages. Author Nolte (1779-1856) was the promoter of the 20-volume edition of Tressor de Numismatique et de Glyptique who hired Achille Collas (1795-1858) to publish four anaglpytic plates (and one of text) each week for over 24 years!

{1967} Anaglyptography, Medallion Engraving for Book Illustration; Reprinted with an Original Anaglyptograph from the Art Exemplar [1859] by William John Stannard. 10 pages.

{1975} Frazier (Arthur H.) Joseph Saxton and his Contributions to the Medal Ruling and Photographic Arts. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. 17 pages, illus. Brief but excellent.

Looking for the meaning of a numismatic word, or the description of a term?  Try the Newman Numismatic Portal's Numismatic Dictionary at: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/dictionary

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web