From prehistoric caves to house walls. With ArtLab this is where engravings take us

Removing, scratching a wall, digging out of the material, instead of adding it, to give life to works of art. We are faced with one of the oldest and most complex techniques in the history of art with the courageous goal of making it more easily appreciated before our eyes: engraving. With ArtLab and our team of graphic and design professionals, together with the extraordinary Bridgeman Images image archive, we venture into the world of engravings to reinterpret them with a contemporary and attentive look to the newest furnishing solutions.

But let’s start from the beginning, because after all it is an art as ancient as the world…

From the earliest origins of engravings

Perhaps we have gone too far, but what we are proposing is a truly new reading of rock engravings, the beginnings of the whole history of art and of the “know-how” of the human being. The engravings of Valcamonica contain an important reality for all humanity, over ten thousand years old, a story that can be brought back to the present day, and even more in the homes and places we live, thanks to the masterful work of the ArtLab designers of Ambientha.

The Valle dei Segni, as this Lombardy valley is also called, is the starting point to think of wallpapers that “scratch” our walls as the first cave artists did. Scenes of everyday life that with their simplicity enrich environments and spaces furnished with contemporary elements. The typical chiaroscuro of the engravings will give its best to the walls thanks to the innovative Ambientha technology for the creation of artistic wallpapers.

Furrow, burin, etching, woodcut… What is engraving

Engraving means leaving a trace on a matrix, that is a plate, of hard but malleable material. The precision and the study of the technique are fundamental for the success of this artistic practice. This matrix, so carefully treated by the artist with special tools such as scrapers, presses, burins, once inked becomes the stamp from which the work is born. The matrix can be of different materials, metal, glass, wood, today also Plexiglas, and each of them has, of course, a different rendering, starting from its texture: hard, smooth, porous.

The engraving is then divided into two large groups. We talk about a relief technique when, for example with woodcut on wood, the artist removes parts of the tablet and wants them not to be inked. The printing of the drawing will turn out, so to speak, in reverse. Conversely, with the cable technique the incisions will correspond to the ink marks on the area to be imprinted which will still leave the mark, or rather, the smudges, of the matrix. And again, we talk about direct engraving if the matrix has been scratched with pointed tools (burin, drypoint …), while those techniques that leave the corrosive power to the applied acids are said to be indirect (so is the etching).

This art which is a real world of passages and attention to detail. We at ArtLab wanted to interpret it through an articulated geographical map of the world of the 1700s by the artist John Senex that contrasts with a place of relaxation and rest with contemporary white tones.

So let’s interpret the world, this time with Alice’s eyes

The engraving lends itself to many interpretations and themes. With engraving, artists have always developed multiple ideas, although always linked to the dictates of a well-defined technique in its mechanisms. We now want to play between the extreme freedom of the subjects of the works and the rationality of the rules that dictate the practice of engraving. It is with this work that Alice, with her Wonderland, described in the pages of Lewis Carroll and present in the imagination of each of us, enters our homes to have tea with biscuits. The work, masterfully created in the mid-nineteenth century by the artist John Tenniel, lets every detail emerge and creates graphic design patterns. Our ArtLab professionals will be able to better interpret, following the desires of “revolution” of Ambientha customers’ spaces, the perfect symphony of spatial and furnishing elements to make this imaginary scene even more incisive in memory and to the eye.

The careful study of colors and shapes brings a new creature into the spaces, perhaps sometimes a little too regulated, of a modern meeting room. A pink flamingo is the new protagonist of a corner dedicated to the exchange of ideas and projects, perhaps he will be the starting point to free the mind and enrich it with new inspirations. The flamingo comes from the hands of the mid-nineteenth-century American artist John James who made it with aquatint engraving and subsequent manual coloring. His landing in this space brings freshness and spring tones to the walls.

The artists speak through the engravings

The artists closest to us are certainly not indifferent towards this complicated technique, but with unexpected results. This is why they approach it with curiosity and great interest. In our ArtLab we have already talked about the master of art Gustav Klimt and his graphic skills which are even more evident with engraving. In particular, in his engraving “The Blood of Fish” Klimt transports us to a floating world, but with well-defined handwriting and sharp outlines: a true masterpiece of graphic design. At the time of the Viennese Secession and Art Nouveau, the artist tackles graphics through female bodies that float in a sea of ​​”thoughts”. The Ambientha wallpaper perfectly describes the work and the bodies that let themselves go in this atmosphere of revolutionary soft and curved lines, beyond the Realism that the artist had now surpassed. At the time, the gaze was turned to Japanese art that forcefully enters the old continent, like a volcano.

Now we are moving far. A country and a type of art that touches us a lot and that we have already dealt with on ArtLab, but which we now look at the world of engravings with new and attentive eyes. The protagonist is Mount Fuji in this engraving by the early 19th century Japanese artist Toyota Hokkei. The strength of the volcano, and at the same time the simplicity of the forms, is extremely contemporary with well-defined graphic features and reinforced by Japanese ideograms which, more than a form of writing, are real artistic drawings on the canvas. The attention to detail and at the same time the graphic power of the chosen profiles lend themselves well to a contemporary furnishing solution.

An art that leaves its marks on the material and also in the memory of the observer, this is engraving. With Ambientha it is within reach of the walls of homes, offices, places for the public to be enjoyed and admired thanks to the careful studies of our ArtLab professionals. Perfectly done.