WordNet
n. an impression taken from an engraved steel plate
engraving on a steel plate
the act of engraving on a steel plate
Wikipedia
Steel engraving is a technique for printing illustrations based on steel instead of copper. It has been rarely used in artistic printmaking, although it was much used for reproductions in the 19th century. Steel engraving was introduced in 1792 by Jacob Perkins (1766–1849), an American inventor, for banknote printing. When Perkins moved to London in 1818, the technique was adapted in 1820 by Charles Warren and especially by Charles Heath (1785–1848) for Thomas Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, which contained the first published plates engraved on steel. The new technique only partially replaced the other commercial techniques of that time such as woodcut, wood engraving, copper engraving and later lithography. All the illustrations in the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 are steel engravings.
Usage examples of "steel engraving".
He had the feeling that he could get inside it, and that in fact he was inside it, along with the mahogany bed and the gateleg table, and the clock and the steel engraving and the paperweight itself.
There was a fireplace in this room, and over the mantle there was a steel engraving of a factory building.
There was a Victorian steel engraving of Princes Street, Edinburgh.
There was a portrait of Darwin behind the bar at the El Dorado, framed in shelves and bottles -- an enlarged reproduction of a steel engraving, depicting him not as a youth in the islands, but as a portly family man back home in England, with a beard as lush as a Christmas wreath.
His last glance back would remain with him: the bright, sun-washed room, the clean sheet turned back, the gold wristwatch heliographing bright arrows of light onto the wallpaper, and Cody himself, with his swatch of flaming red hair, sitting beside the body like a steel engraving.
The moon sliced through the gap at the top of the blinds, moving inexorably across the wall of the bedroom, flirting with the corner of an old steel engraving of a hunter confronting a grizzly bear on a narrow ledge, high in the snow-covered mountains.