Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/141

 post which kept him in touch with his artist friends on the one hand, and on the other afforded him experience of the business world of which the artist usually knows so little. He was elected to the Board in 1886.

When he took charge, wood engraving was the great agent of the illustrator. Line engraving on steel and copper was passing away, although it was far from dead, and photogravure was making its appearance. All colour work was still done by lithography. Colour pictures did not commonly appear in magazines or books; they were reserved mostly for large presentation plates, such as those issued with Christmas numbers. For this work chromo-lithography held a very strong position.

Attempts were being made in the 'eighties to provide illustrations by cheap processes, mainly of line drawings on zinc, and of this movement Paris was the centre; but wood engraving was still supreme for illustration. England stood very high in comparison with other countries for the quality of its work, and all the great engravers did work for the House of Cassell. Moreover, the House had on the premises a large staff of its own, under the direction of Mr. Klinkicht, himself a first-rate engraver, for it would have been impossible to commission artists to turn out the quantity of blocks required each month. The great engravers were artists who could not, or would not, commit themselves to finish work to a date; they would only work when they felt the impulse, and publishing houses had to wait upon their moods to an extent that the present generation could not understand. It was largely this uncertainty as to the completion of blocks that gave the incentive to the development of process work of all kinds which ultimately eliminated the artist engraver. The tendency to illustrate topical events worked in the same direction: drawings had to be produced in haste and to time. There were various processes for reproducing pen-and-ink work, or "line drawings" as they are called technically, but the great