Society, of which he became secretary. Giving his attention to antiquities, he succeeded in deciphering inscriptions which had hitherto baffled scholars. Weakened in health, he returned toEngland in 1838, and died two years later. Consult the Essays on Indian Antiquities, Historic, Numismatic, and Palæographic, of the Late James Prinsep . . . with Memoir by Henry Thoby Prinsep, edited by Thomas (London, 1858).
PRINSEP, Valentine Cameron (1838-1904). An English painter and author, born in Calcutta, India. He was a pupil in London of Leighton, whose style he imitated, and of Gleyre in Paris, and began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1862. His paintings “A Minuet,” “A Bientôt,” and “The Linen Gatherers,” were at the Exposition of 1878. He went to India to paint the “Declaration of Queen Victoria as Empress” in 1876, a large canvas with many portraits. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1897. His publications include Imperial India: An Artist's Journal (1879), several plays, and some writings on art.
PRIN′STERER, Guillaume Groen van. See Groen van Prinsterer.
PRINT (by apheresis, from ME. emprinten, enprinten, to imprint, from OF., Fr. empreinte, imprint, p.p. of empreindre, It. imprimere, to impress, imprint, from Lat. imprimere, inprimere, to impress, from in, in + premere, to press). In the arts, anything which is the result of, or which takes its principal characteristic from, having been printed upon or impressed. The most important use of the term, especially in connection with fine arts, is as being the only proper term for that picture which is produced by taking an impression, as upon paper, from an engraved plate or block. It is much the custom in the United States to speak of such pictures as ‘engravings,’ but this is, of course, erroneous and misleading, and the term ‘print’ is the one which should be used in such cases. The art of printing from an engraved plate is not wholly mechanical, because there are many cases in which the impression taken is not merely a flat transfer from the unmodified, hard surface. Thus, in printing woodcuts, it is customary to use what are called overlays, which are pieces of thin paper cut in peculiar shapes, accommodated to the design engraved upon the block; and these overlays are placed where needed behind the paper upon which the transfer is to be made in such a fashion as to cause certain parts of the printing to be stronger and blacker than others. So in the printing from dry point (q.v.) plates in which that process has been used for the completion of an etching (q.v.) it is quite usual to leave a certain amount of ink upon the surface of the copper plate. As in the Liber Studiorum (q.v.) the plates are etched and also charged with mezzotint or aquatint, so, in prints made by this process, the line work of the draughtsman is completed in a way by the surface work or gradation made by the printer. In ordinary commercial use, the word ‘print’ is used in a special sense, as meaning one of the more ordinary impressions from the block or plate in contradistinction to the proofs of different kinds. See Proof.
PRINTING. The process of taking impressions, generally on paper in ink, of printing types or of designs, drawings, or photographic prints, which have been previously cut, etched, drawn, or engraved on some solid surface. Printing with ink is done by three methods: (1) from a raised surface in high relief, as in type or woodcuts; (2) from a sunk or incised surface, as in copper-plate engraving; (3) from a flat surface on stone made repellent to ink in portions by dampening the stone, as in lithography (q.v.). As the raised surface is easiest inked and impressed, typography is found most generally useful.
The Chinese methods of printing were practiced at a very ancient date. As early as B.C. 50 the Chinese had originated a method of printing in ink on paper by means of engraved blocks, although it was not until nearly a thousand years later that printing in this manner was extensively practiced. In A.D. 925 the principal Chinese classics were printed for the Imperial College of Peking from blocks of wood engraved in relief. The method of producing these printing-blocks is described as follows: The work which is intended to be printed is first written on sheets of thin transparent paper. Each of these sheets is then pasted face downward upon a block of wood and an engraver with suitable tools cuts away the portions of the paper and block on which nothing is traced, thus leaving the characters in relief and producing a printing-block. To print from these blocks, they are inked; a sheet of paper is carefully laid on and a brush is passed over the paper, pressing it upon the inked surface and thus securing a printed impression. By this process a separate engraved block had to be prepared for each printed sheet or page. The Chinese are also credited with having used movable type as early as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and such types are now used extensively by the European missions in China for printing Chinese books and papers. The chief difficulty in using movable types for printing Chinese is due to the fact that each Chinese word requires a separate character instead, as in the European languages, of being composed of letters or characters which are resolvable into an alphabet. The native Chinese printer to-day, when uninfluenced by European teaching, uses the primitive printing-blocks described above.
In Europe in classical and mediæval times books were made by transcribing them in manuscript (q.v.). About the thirteenth century, in Italy and Spain, these manuscripts began to be produced with the initial letters stamped in ink from engraved blocks of wood. This practice was gradually developed until printing-blocks were quite commonly employed in printing images and text, generally of a religious character, on paper sheets which were bound together in book form. In short, the gradual development of printing on relief was as follows: (1) initial letters, autographs, and trade marks; (2) playing cards; (3) figured or ornamental textile fabrics; (4) religious pictures with and without lettering; (5) engraved words without pictures; (6) types of single letters founded in a mold.
Whether he was or was not the first to employ movable printing types, John Gutenberg (q.v.) is usually named as the inventor who first established typography on anything like a scientific basis. The claimant who seems to have the best right to contest with Gutenberg the invention of typography is Laurens Janszoon Coster (q.v.) of
