Wood engraving is the oldest graphical technique. The Chinese are considered its authors because they
already used woodcut to duplicate writing (ideograms) in the VI century. Wood engraving reached Europe
via Japan only in the XVI century. Presumably, this method was used to publish Varro’s “Imagines” in
Rome in the I century BC.
Wood engraving, improved for centuries, found many adherents and developed into many varieties.
The colored description of the journey to the Holy Land by Bernard von Brydenbach from 1486, is the first
book where the name of the artist, the wood engraver, Erhard Renwich is mentioned.
A seal ring of Kasper Hochfeder is regarded as the oldest Polish wood engraving. Kasper Hochfeder
came from Metz to Poland at instignation of Jan Haller, and he founded a printing house in Cracow in
1503.
Thomas Bewick, an English engraver who lived between the XVIII and XIX century, did a lot to modernize
a method of wood engraving. Polish artists: Wincenty Smokowski, Józef Holewiński, Jan Styfi,
Feliks Jasiński also contributed to the development of wood engraving as an independent artistic technique,
which was used to decorate books as well.
But the most distinguished in this field was Władysław Skoczylas and his students from the Academy
of Fine Arts in Warsaw: Tadeusz Cieślewski junior; Tadeusz Kulisiewicz, Stanisław Ostoja–Chostowski,
Edmund Bartłomiejczyk and others
