Ablington Manor Farm, Gloucestershire 

Francis Adams Comstock made this print of Ablington Manor Farm using a painstaking method of engraving. Comstock would have used a tool called a burin to carve thousands of tiny lines into a copper plate. These lines, and the spaces between them, create the image. It’s a very slow, deliberate process. Look closely and you’ll see the incredible density of marks needed to create a range of tones from light to dark. The texture of the paper also plays a part, as it picks up the ink from the engraved lines. This technique has a long history, used for everything from old master prints to commercial illustrations. Comstock’s choice to depict a rural scene, using such a traditional process, speaks to a certain nostalgia for pre-industrial ways of life. The sheer labor involved in creating the print is also a statement, a contrast to the mass-produced images that dominate our modern world.