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Etching Needle

third quarter 19th century (made)
Artist/Maker
Donaldson (maker)
Samuel Palmer (user)
Place of origin
Britain (made)

Typically engravers use burins with a diamond or lozenge shaped profile to incise their designs into metal. The action of engraving with a burin creates a tapered line, which swells in the middle. The shavings of metal that are brought up are scraped or burnished off before printing. This burin was used by the artist Samuel Palmer.


Object details

Categories
Tools & Equipment
Printmaking Techniques
Metalwork
Object type
Etching needle
Materials and techniques
Wood, metal alloy and steel.
Wood
Alloy
Steel
Metal-Working
Brief description
Etching needle used by Samuel Palmer.
Physical description
Etching tool with long four sided blade and wooden handle.
Dimensions
  • Height: 150mm
  • Width: 6mm (Note: of shaft)
Marks and inscriptions
  • Samuel / Palmer (Inscribed (in etching) on ferrule (possibly in Palmer's own hand))
  • Samuel Palmer's burin / Given to me by Martin Hardie - 1937 / ROBERT AUSTIN (Inscribed on steel point in another hand.)
Credit line
Presented by Miss Dorothea Short
Object history
In 1850, at the age of forty-five, Samuel Palmer took up etching. The artist's son, A. H. Palmer, gave the tools to three people: Sir Frank Short, Martin Hardie, and F.L. Griggs. Hardie and Short each donated two of Palmer's etching tools to the V&A museum. In a note sent to Martin Hardie in 1923 A. H. Palmer recalled that the tools with 'German silver fittings were made by one Donaldson, in industrious, between bibulous, intervals - a noted man at his craft'.
Summary
Typically engravers use burins with a diamond or lozenge shaped profile to incise their designs into metal. The action of engraving with a burin creates a tapered line, which swells in the middle. The shavings of metal that are brought up are scraped or burnished off before printing. This burin was used by the artist Samuel Palmer.
Associated objects
Bibliographic references
  • Vaughan, William, Barker, Elizabeth E., Harrison, Colin, et al. Samuel Palmer 1805- 1881 : Vision and Landscape. London : British Museum Press 2005 no, 127c, p.205, illus. p. 206
  • Victoria and Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings Accessions 1953 London: HMSO, 1963
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
E.459-1953

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Record createdAugust 3, 2006
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O126833/etching-needle-donaldson/
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