The practice of carving designs, or engraving, on stone and metal objects has been used by crafts workers since early antiquity; the surviving monuments, vessels, and jewelry of Greek, Sumerian, Chinese, and Egyptian civilizations, among others, provide ample examples. The practice of etching, using acid to burn designs into metal or glass, was originally used for decorative purposes by medieval armorers. The Chinese were using wood carvings to create reproducible artwork in the first millennium a.d., but it was not until the fifteenth century that engraving and etching designs on metal developed into art forms unto themselves. The first known artistic engravings in Europe were created by goldsmiths in Germany and northern Italy; later, engravers employed other soft metals, including copper, which is the primary medium used for plates today. There are two principal types of engraving. In intaglio, a design is carved...