What is die-sinking?

Die-sinking, also called die-engraving, is the craft of cutting by hand the hardened steel dies that stamp metal. The die is the master tool, not the finished thing: the engraver cuts the design into the steel in reverse and recessed, so that when the die is driven into a blank under force, the workpiece comes out the right way round and in relief. I met Chris Shaw at Chimo in Sheffield, where he has been cutting dies for forty-five years, and the mental trick of it is the part that stops you: he is engraving everything backwards and sunken, holding in his head the positive, raised thing that will only exist once the press comes down.

Ordinary engraving cuts a finished image into the surface you keep - the inscription on a tankard, the line on a plate. Die-sinking is a step removed: the engraver cuts into a block of steel that will become a tool. Because that tool will be pressed into metal to leave a raised impression, everything must be cut intaglio (recessed, not raised) and in reverse (a mirror image), and judged for how the metal will flow into it under pressure. The die-sinker is making the thing that makes the thing.

It is close kin to cutlery and the other Sheffield metal trades, because dies are what stamp out cutlery blanks, holloware patterns and makers’ marks. It overlaps with coin and medal making, where the die is struck to produce relief portraits and lettering. But it is its own discipline, defined by that double inversion - sunk and reversed - that no other engraving trade demands of the hand and the eye at once.

A die is the hardened steel master that stamps the metal. Sinking is the cutting of the recessed design into it - hence "die-sinker". Intaglio means cut below the surface (the opposite of relief). A punch or force is the matching tool that presses the blank into the die. Annealing softens the steel so it can be cut, and hardening toughens the finished die so it survives thousands of strikes. The cutting itself is done with gravers (engraving chisels) and small files, the steel held and turned to the light so the engraver can read the depth.

The die-sinker starts with a block of steel, softened by annealing so it can be worked. The design is laid out on it in reverse, and then cut down into the steel with gravers and files - the engraver constantly reading the recess as the raised positive it will become, and judging depth and draft so the struck metal will fill the form cleanly and release from it. Lettering, pattern and modelled relief are all cut sunk and mirror-imaged.

When the cutting is done the die is hardened and tempered so it can take the repeated shock of the press, and then it goes to work, stamping its pattern into blank after blank. A single well-cut die can strike thousands of identical pieces, which is the whole economic point: the slow, exacting hand-work happens once, in the tool, and is then multiplied by the press. It is unforgiving work - a slip is cut into the tool that every product will carry - and it rewards exactly the decades of practice Chris Shaw has behind him.

The archive documented Chris Shaw, a die engraver at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing, where he has cut dies for forty-five years - the man who makes the dies the rest of the works stamps with. That is the quiet position die-sinking holds in a metal trade: it is upstream of everything, the hand-skill that the powered presses depend on, and usually invisible in the finished product. Documenting it is documenting the tool-behind-the-tool that Sheffield’s stamped metalwork has always relied on.

Hand die-engraving is rare and getting rarer. Much die-making is now done by machine - milled, spark-eroded, or cut from a digital model - and the hand die-sinker is a specialist held by a dwindling number of works. The skill takes many years to build, the work is largely hidden, and the people who hold it tend to be long-serving veterans rather than new entrants, which is the classic shape of a craft at risk. It survives where the work still needs a hand - fine detail, repairs, one-off dies - and where someone like Chris Shaw keeps cutting.

It is learned by long apprenticeship inside a works. The archive’s Learn a Craft directory and Chris Shaw’s subject page show where and how.

What is the difference between die-sinking and ordinary engraving?
Ordinary engraving cuts a finished image into the surface you keep. Die-sinking cuts the image, in reverse and intaglio (recessed), into a hardened steel die that is then used to stamp many copies - so the engraver is making the tool, not the final object, and must cut everything mirror-imaged and sunk.

What is a die used for?
A die is the hardened steel master that stamps or presses a shape and pattern into metal under force - used to make cutlery, holloware, badges, medals, coins and decorative metalwork. One die can strike thousands of identical pieces.

Is die-engraving still done by hand?
Rarely, and by very few people. Much die-making is now done by machine, but hand die-engraving survives where the work demands it; the archive documented Chris Shaw, a die engraver at Chimo in Sheffield for forty-five years, who cuts the dies the works stamps with.