Tom Cogan is a Musician, Wood Engraver and Gardener.
He started Wood Engraving twenty years ago having previously worked on etchings at Gainsborough’s House Print Workshop Sudbury, where he is a member.

Tom Says “The real joy for me of Wood Engraving is the miniscule detail that is possible with magnifying lamp, very sharp graving tools and boxwood blocks to work on. These are a work of art in themselves, beautiful, immensely tactile and almost too good to work on!”

Tom loves the blackness and whiteness of the process with all the different shades and textures in between. A lot of what he does is connected to the great love of, and passion for, architecture especially the great English Country Houses and our amazing historical Churches. In all Tom’s Wood Engravings there is a personal “connection”.

Wood Engraving

Functionally wood engraving is a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the ink is applied to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. Thomas Bewick developed the wood engraving technique at the end of the 18th century.

By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the valleys, the removed areas. As a result, wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than copper-plate engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character.