I've been purchasing small intaglio prints almost every summer for many years. However, it wasn't until today that I truly understood the complexity of this art technique.
I acquire these small prints at an annual exhibition [1] that's part of a competition featuring artists from around the world. This event takes place at Taller Fort in the quaint village of Cadaqués (Catalunya, Spain), which is well worth a visit if you're an art enthusiast.
In commercial terms, this is called "Intaglio" [1] (TIL! I only knew the Germany word).
While there are lots of printing techniques which are interesting in their details, I always have a special place for this one in my heart. :-D
The sheer size of the printing cylinders (at least in most applications), the enormous speeds those machines run with and the effort that goes into producing the printing cylinders in the first place is just impressive.
Intaglio is also very versatile, though it only makes sense for larger runs, due to the work beforehand.
Unfortunately only in German (auto-translated closed captions are not great) but maybe you can enjoy the images. The guy's using a more than hundred years old Pantograph to transfer fonts from a template to the copper plate.
