a.f., aq., aquaf., aquaforti, aquaforti fecit ‘made with strong water’. Aquafortis is the Latin for nitric acid, so this was the conventional term to mean ‘etched’. It was commonly used by a craftsman etching someone else’s image.
Appresso ‘At the house of’ (Italian).
Apud The Latin for appresso.
aq: tinta, aquatinta Used of the person who achieved on the plate the tonal aquatint areas in the image – usually, but not always, the person responsible for the whole plate.
cael., caelavit ‘engraved’. Used on engravings until the seventeenth century, and a reliable indication that the image was indeed engraved.
de1., delt., delin., delineavit ‘drew’. Used of the artist from whose drawing the craftsman prepared the printing surface. Compare pinx.
dessine ‘drawn’. See del. eng., engd., engraved Used mainly on line engravings, which combine etching with engraving, but sometimes even on aquatints which are unlikely to contain any engraved lines. Unlike the equivalent sc., this was not much borrowed by the wood engravers of the nineteenth century and so is at least a fairly reliable indication of an intaglio print.
engraved on stone Up to the mid-1820s this could mean merely drawn on stone for a conventional lithograph, but thereafter it is likely to indicate a stone engraving.
exc., exct., excudit, excudebat, ‘struck out’ or ‘made’. Conventionally used of the publisher of a print, but can also be found referring to the man who more literally ‘made’ it, in the sense of creating the printing surface, where someone else is credited as the publisher.
f., fec., feet., fecit, fac., faciebat ‘made’ or ‘did’. Widely but vaguely used on prints. It can be found on lithographs as well as on every type of intaglio print. It is most often used where the originator of the image has also created the printing surface, but this is far from invariable. Can also be used of a specific task – for example aquatinta fecit, meaning ‘aquatinted’, where another craftsman is credited with etching the outline.
formis (owner of the forms) used often on the Malta maps by Pietro de Nobili.
gez., gezeichnet ‘drawn’. See del.
gravé ‘engraved’. See eng. for normal meaning; but also sometimes used in France on lithographs.
imp., impressit ‘printed’. Almost exclusively used of the rolling press and so an indication of an intaglio print; but see also imp. lith.
imp. lith. The lithographer’s version of the intaglio printer’s imp., meaning printed on a lithographic press.
inc., incidebat, incidit ‘incised’. Used of an engraver, and a more reliable indication than sc. that the print is indeed an engraving.
in., inv., invt., invenit, inventor ‘invented’ or ‘inventor’. Used of the original artist whose image is being reproduced.
lith., litho., lithog. [etc.] An unreliable term, which can refer either to the person who created the image on the stone or to the person who printed it from the stone.
on stone by Used of the artist or craftsman who drew the image on the stone for a lithograph.
ph. sc., photosculpsit ‘photo-engraved’. Occasionally used in the late nineteenth century of the craftsman or firm responsible for the complex task of creating a process plate or block.
pinx., pinxt., pinxit, ping., pingebat ‘painted’. Used of the artist whose original painting the print reproduces. If a draughts man is also credited (see del.), he will have copied the painting to provide the more portable image from which the print was actually made.
restituit to signify retouching or restoring the plate. Lafreri, for instance, uses this term
sc., sculp., sculpsit, sculpt., sculpebat ‘carved’. The most unreliable of all terms on a print. Originally used for pure engravings, it was continued on line engravings which were usually more etched than engraved. It was adopted, almost invariably in the shortest form of sc., by wood engravers in the nineteenth century; and since these were the craftsmen who later took on the production of line blocks and halftone blocks, the commercial successors of the wood engraving, the term can still be found on these process prints into the early twentieth century, in three-colour work as well as monochrome. Such blocks were admittedly finished with the graver, but by then that was the only element of ‘carving’ which remained. At another extreme the term was sometimes used to indicate genuine carving, and prints reproducing Renaissance sculpture can be found which boast ‘Michelangelo sc.’.