What is Intaglio?

Answer 1For well over a hundred years in the printing industry, Intaglio has been a process in which groves are etched into a copper plate to receive and hold ink, in the areas where it is desired to have ink print out on the paper.

The ink was applied to the entire plate, and the excess was "wiped off" with a blade called a "doctor blade."

The sheet of printing paper was placed into contact with the plate, and when pressure was applied, the paper surface picked up the ink out of the groves.

The process was also refered to as "Photogravure," and was used to print the Sunday Photogravure inserts nationwide. Since the advent of modern offset printing technology, the use of Photogravure has been superceded.

Advantages of the Intaglio/Photogravure prosess included very long plate life resulting in the ability to make many more copies before plate changes, and also, made very high quality color separation half-tone plates for [at the time] the ultimate in color reproduction quality.