An outstanding presentation and recommended pick for discriminating art library collections. David Platzker's Hard Pressed gathers 600 years of prints and technical information, from woodcuts and etchings to digital modern processes. This is much more than a collection of print images however; text provides a running history which includes profiles of key artists, discussions of technical advancements, and insights on print reproduction changes. Black and white and color photos abound.

This book brilliantly tells the story of the history of the "fine art print" from a fresh prospective. It begins around 1400, when papermaking was introduced to Europe from the East, and the development of woodblock printmaking enabled the creation of the first woodcut prints. What follows is 600 years of technological and artistic innovation: by the 1450s, the printing press had been invented, allowing bibles and broadsheets, as well as simple, devotional pictures to be produced quickly and cheaply. Words and images, with their information and ideas, became available not just to an elite few, but to ordinary people.

The books two essays by Wyckoff and Platzker detail the development of printmaking though artistic experimentation to create a distinctive art form, how new processes allowed images with specific visual characteristics-from early, rough woodcuts, to more refined linear methods such as etching and engraving; from the delicate tonal approaches of mezzotint and aquatint to recent computerized techniques. It delves in particular into how some artists embraced new methods matching innovative techniques with visual invention; while others subverted them.

Artists such as Rembrandt in the 17th century and Edward Ruscha in the 20th century are shown to have conceived of the print as a virtually unique object. The approach is informed by the 20th century notion of the "original print" produced in small, limited editions, continuing the tradition of printmaking as a fine art.

In this book, which accompanies a traveling exhibition, details how printmaking has throughout its history been both a medium for communicating ideas of all kinds and an arena for artistic invention. Imagine for a moment the world without books or newspapers, without posters or postcards. Then follow the history of experimentation and artistic vision that is presented here to discover printmaking as an art form of unexpected possibilities.