Printing in the Infernal Method: William Blake’s ‘Illuminated Printing’

In 1788 William Blake invented a method of relief etching that he called ‘Illuminated Printing’. This made it possible to print both the text of his poems and the images that he created to illustrate them from the same copper plate in an engraver’s rolling press. The lecture will explain Blake's invention in the context of conventional eighteenth-century illustrated book production, its metaphorical significance for Blake, the creation of the first illuminated books like the Songs of Innocence, and how the further development of colour-printing his images led to the production of the Large Colour Prints or monotypes of 1795, Blake’s supreme achievement as a graphic artist.

Michael Phillips taught at Oxford, University College London and Edinburgh University before joining the interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York, where he is now Emeritus Fellow. He has published widely on William Blake and was guest curator of the major exhibitions of Blake in London at Tate Britain 2000, in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art 2001, in Paris at the Petit Palais 2009 and, most recently, ‘William Blake Apprentice & Master’ at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.