In 1980, after a serious accident, I did my first engraving.
We went on vacation in the Basque country and I brought in my luggages a set of gouges.
During the stay, we visited the Museum of Bayonne where I admired two Basque steles and I made a little drawing.
At the beach, I found a piece of wood of the dimension that should be appropriate for engraving and I did my first engraving. Note that I made a mistake, forgetting that for printing, you reverse the drawing and, like Durer did for one number, I engraved the inverse of four numbers.
Back in Strasbourg, we, especially Joseph Strub and me, printed it on a press stored in an annex of the school of architecture. I did not numeroted them, but marked them with “n. n. ” for unnumbered.
Since then, I have tried printing on the same board, as the Chinese did, without satisfactory result. This process, that I had seen in China, consists in gluing the paper on the board or stone, moistening it and, with a pad, press paper in the place of the hollow and then with an ink pad file ink full places, let dry ink, moisten the paper to take it off and it works with Chinese paper thin and flexible. Wet paper is then stuck on a thicker paper and stretched to make disappear the places that had been pressed.
Then I made a new stay in the Basque country and I visited cemeteries and designed Basque tombs and I pulled in tests.
