The Quiet Politics of a Line Too Fine to Copy

I spent two damp weeks last winter in the back room of the Mercantile Print Office, where the windows looked onto a coal yard and every desk wore a green dusting of copper filings. The engraver in charge, Miss Arden, refused every shortcut I proposed and answered with a burin stroke so small it seemed less drawn than persuaded out of the plate.

Difficulty is the signature

The most persuasive note is not the loudest note. It is the one that makes forgery expensive: a portrait built from disciplined shadows, a border threaded with repeated clauses, a rosette whose loops meet with the cold logic of a machine and the slight tremor of a human wrist.