Excerpt from Catalogue of an Exhibition of Early American Engraving Upon Copper, 1727-1850 In America as in Europe, engraving upon wood preceded work upon capper; and very crudely engraved seals and other simple wood cuts appear soon after the introduction of the printing-press into the American Colonies. The first woodcut portrait of which we have any record is that of the Rev. Richard Mather, credited to John Foster as the en graver and appearing in a life of Mather pub lished by Foster, in Cambridge, New England, in 1670. During the eighteenth century wood-engraving was practically only used in this country on the title-pages of almanacs and in the headings of and in advertising illustra tions in the newspapers of the day; and the few examples thus preserved are usually atrocious in execution. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.