George Escher’s Memories

Father’s hands are the feature of him which I most vividly remember. Looking at their precise movements, neatly arranging tools, sharpening gouges and chisels with rhythmic motions, preparing the wood to a smooth, velvety finish, I could sense the pleasure that this activity gave him.

As I became older he explained carefully his preference for planks of parallel grain pearwood, because of the challenge presented by the tendency to split if improperly cut. He hinted at a feeling of cowardice when he was forced to use end-grain pear or boxwood to create fine details.

How many hours he spent lovingly caressing the grainy surface of lithographic stones with a grease pencil, trying to approach ideal transitions from light to dark grey!

Printing a woodcut, if not repeated too often in a row, was also a pleasure. That ritual, seen over and over again during my life, kept its feeling of magic to the last. It was not only the visual aspect that held me entranced. The delicious strong smell of printing ink, the swishing, slapping sound of the putty-knife spreading ink on a glass plate, the loud crackle of the ink roller, the soft rubbing sound of the ivory spoon pressing the paper down on the wood; they all were essential preliminaries to a spectacular finale. Father would lay down his spoon, grasp carefully a corner of the paper, lift it a little to check if the black surface was uniform; then, after slowly peeling the sheet from the wood, he would triumphantly hold it up in the air for inspection: a sparkling crisp new print.

“Roman Memories” by George Escher was published in “Mostra Maurits C. Escher,” Istituto Olandese de Roma, 1985 Reprinted with permission of the author