EDMUND BLAMPIED is perhaps the most well-known artist to emerge from the Channel Islands, located off the French coast of Normandy in the English Channel. An accomplished lithographer, illustrator, painter and cartoonist, Blampied is remembered primarily for his etchings and drypoints that depict rural life on his home island of Jersey.

Having spent his boyhood in the country among peasants, farm laborers and animals, Blampied developed an intimate relationship with the agricultural surroundings of the island that gives his work a remarkable level of realism. Blampied moved from his beloved island to London at the age of 16 to pursue an art career and had much success. During the 1920s he was given the honor of being elected to the Royal Society of British Artists. In 1925 he was awarded a Gold Medal in the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, the exhibition whose name inspired the term “Art Deco”.

During the 1930s when the Great Depression dried up the market for fine prints, Blampied turned his production toward cartoons and caricatures. He illustrated a lavish edition of Peter Pan in 1938. World War II brought Blampied back to the Channel Islands where he became trapped for five years as a result of the German occupation. After the war, he remained in Jersey until his death in 1966.

ETCHING & DRYPOINT are two forms of intaglio printmaking. Intaglio comes from the Italian word intagliare, meaning ‘to incise’. In intaglio printing, an image is incised with a pointed tool or ‘bitten’ with acid into a metal plate, usually copper or zinc. The plate is covered with ink and then wiped so that only the incised grooves contain ink. The plate and a dampened sheet of paper are run through a press under pressure, transfering the ink to the paper.

In the drypoint technique, lines are scratched directly into a plate with a sharp pointed tool called a stylus. The scratching doesn’t completely remove the metal but displaces it, creating a rough raised burr along the edges of the groove. This burr catches and holds ink in an irregular way, giving drypoint its distinctive appearance.

Etching suggests that acid was used to incise the plate. In making an etching, the plate is first coated with an acid-resistant material called a ground. Instead of scratching directly into the plate, the artist scratches through the ground. When the plate is exposed to acid, the acid ‘bites’ the exposed plate where the ground has been removed.

Blampied often uses a combination a combination of drypoint and etching techniques in his prints.