William Blake (1757–1827) was a visionary poet and printmaker who developed the technique of relief etching to print his books of poems. He closely integrated text and image on the same plate. Blake called his etchings ‘illuminated printing’. He worked with his wife, Catherine.
To make a relief etching the artist drew the design in an acid resistant substance so that when the plate was immersed in acid, the drawn areas were protected. When the acid had eaten into the rest of the plate, the lines of the design then stood up in relief. The softer metal zinc was preferred for relief etched plates, rather than copper as used in intaglio etching. Blake made several other innovations in printing his poetic visions. Although he relief-etched the metal plates, he used a roller press usually associated with intaglio processes to achieve more printing pressure. Using both oily inks and water-based paints, he printed the text and the coloured images simultaneously, allowing the inks to run onto the lower areas of the plate to create dynamic background washes.