In the beginning, before the printing press, printmaking was not considered an art form, rather a medium of communication. It was not till the 18th century that art prints began to be considered originals and not till the 19th that artists began to produce limited editions and to sign their prints along with the technical information necessary to authenticate the work.

Engraving goes back to cave art, executed on stones, bones and cave walls. The duplication of engraved images goes back some 3,000 years to the Sumerians who engraved designs on stone cylinder seals. Academics think that the Chinese produced a primitive form of print, the rubbing, as far back as the 2nd century AD. The Japanese made the first authenticated prints, wood-block rubbings of of Buddhist charms, in the late-middle eighth century.

Printmaking in Europe
European printmaking began with textile printing as early as the sixth century, while printing on paper had to wait a bit longer for the arrival of paper technology from the Far East. The first paper produced in Europe was in Játiva in Spain in 1151. The first woodcuts printed on paper were playing cards produced in Germany at the beginning of the 15th century. It was only slightly before this that the first royal seals and stamps appeared in the England of Henry VI.

Printing from a metal engraving was introduced a few decades after the woodcut, and greatly refined the results. Restricted at first to goldsmiths and armorers, it soon became the most popular form of serial reproduction. The earliest dated printed engraving is a German print dated 1446, "The Flagellation," and it was in Germany that early intaglio printing developed before passing to Italy (Mantegna, Raimondi, Ghisi) and the Low Countries (Lucas van Leyden, Goltzius, Claesz, Matsys). From makers of playing cards the metal engraving technique.