Accession Code: wu0394w Title: Lord Leycester's Hospital, Warwick Date completed: 1974 Medium: Prints Material: Woodcut Height (mm): 571 Width (mm): 613 Depth (mm): n/a Inscription: Signed lower right, title lower left. Numbered 6/50 Location Name: Cryfield Grange Location Description:  Dining Room Location Floor: 0

Tessa Beaver taught in a secondary school in East Africa, where she learnt the art of woodcut printing. Woodcuts or woodblocks are made in blocks of wood which, for best results, have an even grain and are not too hard. A block for woodcutting is generally about 2 cm thick and is cut plank-wide along the grain and planed smooth. The design is either drawn directly onto the block or on thin paper pasted to the block. With a sharp knife, the artist cuts away all the undrawn areas, up to the edges of the lines. Large areas of negative space (unprinted areas) are made using a small chisel or gouge. A woodcut is not really capable of expressing fine details. Several thousand prints can be made from one woodcut.

Here Beaver takes a familiar building in her local town of Warwick and presents it through the medium of the woodblock which gives the building a solidity and simplicity.