Engravings & Etchings

A merchant ship’s library in 1843, plates still smelling of the press. Antique engravings and etchings are mostly the work of 18th- and 19th-century European engravers, made for travel books, encyclopedias and private folios. Hand-colored plates after the ancient Greek vases of Sir William Hamilton, issued around 1791, sit beside scenes from Captain Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific and historic views of Algeria. Thomas Allom’s China series of 1843 shows the Grotto of Camoens at Macao, a merchant’s house near Canton and the grand temple at Putuo; other plates picture the Ellora caves of India and Napoleonic Egypt, the Orient as Europeans imagined it after 1798.

Engravings from Italy, France, Germany, Japan and the United States extend the run. Steel and copper plates give a dense, fine line that rewards close range. Hung in a tight grid in a library, or in pairs along a corridor, they bring order and quiet detail to a room.