Cobwebs

John Taylor Arms was an architect who fell in love with etching. He is celebrated for his meticulous architectural renderings executed with breathtaking realism. He developed his extraordinary prints from detailed drawings made on location that could take weeks to complete. He traced these drawings onto the metal plate to guide his etching needle.

Arms’ Cobwebs is made out of thousands of microscopic lines. Early etchings in his career, like this view towards the Brooklyn Bridge in Lower Manhattan, are notable because they include figures that help bring the viewer into the scene. A human presence is noticeably absent in his later prints.