What got you into engraving? Was it your family’s business? Did a friend convince you to try it? Did you see a laser or rotary engraving machine somewhere and think, “I’ve got to try that!”?
No matter how or why you got into the business, when you started you probably weren’t thinking about continuing a tradition that was established half a million years ago. Almost since civilization began, people have been engraving. And you may be surprised to find that you have more in common with our engraving ancestors than you thought. The early people who scraped primitive drawings onto cave walls (as well as those who came later) used some of the same tools and techniques that we still use today.
Because the entire history of engraving up to modern times is too extensive and broad in scope to cover in this article, we will only touch on highlights throughout the ages. We could never hope to bring you complete information about all the things that have been engraved, by all civilizations, through all the different centuries. Instead, this article will focus on three questions: Why did people engrave? What techniques have been used for engraving? And what have people been engraving throughout the years?