Engraving, a time-honored art

In the 15th century, engravers began creating copper plates to reproduce fine works of art on paper, but the basic technique – carving or incising images into a hard surface – began centuries earlier. As long as 500,000 years ago, early man was carving images into stone on the Serengeti Plains in Africa, and later the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans used similar techniques to decorate, communicate, and even record history.

Since then, the process has been used with gems, glass, and precious metals such as bronze, iron and copper. The earliest firearms were hand engraved with intricate images, a tradition that still continues to a lesser extent.

In today’s modern world, engraving is still considered the ultimate “printing” process. It is used for producing currency, bank notes, and other security-sensitive documents because it is extremely difficult to counterfeit, but businesses and individuals also know that engraving offers a degree of quality, elegance, and style than can’t be matched by any other printing method.