What is a carborundum print?
I know of two different intaglio methods that are known by this name… • The WPA-era artist Dox Thrash is credited with innovating the use of carborundum grit to grain conventional copper and zinc plates so that they would hold a dark film of ink overall in the manner of the more labor intensive mezzotint plate… the image was then worked from dark to light by burnishing the pitted surface from areas of the plate so they would hold less ink. Degas used a so-called maniér-gris which consisted of abrading areas of the plate with carborundum to give them gray plate tone when wiped but did not burnish lights into these areas. • When I was an under-grad at Bennington College we made prints by drawing on a varnish sealed cardboard or Plexiglass base with sticky glue and then dusting carborundum on to this before it dried… the darkness of these drawn images and areas could be softened by the applications of layers of diluted gloss acrylic medium or acrylic gesso.
