1.
Bordeaux
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Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France. The municipality of Bordeaux proper has a population of 243,626, together with its suburbs and satellite towns, Bordeaux is the centre of the Bordeaux Métropole. With 749,595 inhabitants and 1,178,335 in the area, it is the fifth largest in France, after Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Lille. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture of the Gironde department and its inhabitants are called Bordelais or Bordelaises. The term Bordelais may also refer to the city and its surrounding region, Bordeaux is the worlds major wine industry capital. It is home to the main wine fair, Vinexpo. Bordeaux wine has been produced in the region since the 8th century, the historic part of the city is on the UNESCO World Heritage List as an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble of the 18th century. After Paris, Bordeaux has the highest number of preserved buildings of any city in France. In historical times, around 300 BC it was the settlement of a Celtic tribe, the Bituriges Vivisci, the name Bourde is still the name of a river south of the city. In 107 BC, the Battle of Burdigala was fought by the Romans who were defending the Allobroges, a Gallic tribe allied to Rome, the Romans were defeated and their commander, the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, was killed in the action. The city fell under Roman rule around 60 BC, its importance lying in the commerce of tin, later it became capital of Roman Aquitaine, flourishing especially during the Severan dynasty. In 276 it was sacked by the Vandals, further ravage was brought by the same Vandals in 409, the Visigoths in 414 and the Franks in 498, beginning a period of obscurity for the city. In the late 6th century, the city re-emerged as the seat of a county and an archdiocese within the Merovingian kingdom of the Franks, the city started to play a regional role as a major urban center on the fringes of the newly founded Frankish Duchy of Vasconia. Around 585, a certain Gallactorius is cited as count of Bordeaux, the city was plundered by the troops of Abd er Rahman in 732 after storming the fortified city and overwhelming the Aquitanian garrison. After Duke Eudess defeat, the Aquitanian duke could still save part of its troops, the following year, the Frankish commander descended again over Aquitaine, but clashed in battle with the Aquitanians and left to take on hostile Burgundian authorities and magnates. In 745, Aquitaine faced yet another expedition by Charles sons Pepin and Carloman against Hunald, Hunald was defeated, and his son Waifer replaced him, who in turn confirmed Bordeaux as the capital city. During the last stage of the war against Aquitaine, it was one of Waifers last important strongholds to fall to King Pepin the Shorts troops. Next to Bordeaux, Charlemagne built the fortress of Fronsac on a hill across the border with the Basques, in 778, Seguin was appointed count of Bordeaux, probably undermining the power of the Duke Lupo, and possibly leading to the Battle of Roncevaux Pass that very year
2.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
3.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
4.
Printmaking
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Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints that have an element of originality, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print produced is not considered a copy but rather is considered an original, a print may be known as an impression. Printmaking is not chosen only for its ability to multiple impressions. Prints are created by transferring ink from a matrix or through a screen to a sheet of paper or other material. Screens made of silk or synthetic fabrics are used for the screenprinting process, other types of matrix substrates and related processes are discussed below. Multiple impressions printed from the matrix form an edition. Prints may also be printed in book form, such as illustrated books or artists books, Printmaking techniques are generally divided into the following basic categories, Relief, where ink is applied to the original surface of the matrix. Relief techniques include woodcut or woodblock as the Asian forms are known, wood engraving. Intaglio, where ink is applied beneath the surface of the matrix. Intaglio techniques include engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, planographic, where the matrix retains its original surface, but is specially prepared and/or inked to allow for the transfer of the image. Planographic techniques include lithography, monotyping, and digital techniques, stencil, where ink or paint is pressed through a prepared screen, including screenprinting and pochoir. Other types of printmaking techniques outside these groups include collagraphy and viscosity printing, collagraphy is a printmaking technique in which textured material is adhered to the printing matrix. This texture is transferred to the paper during the printing process, Contemporary printmaking may include digital printing, photographic mediums, or a combination of digital, photographic, and traditional processes. Many of these techniques can also be combined, especially within the same family, for example, Rembrandts prints are usually referred to as etchings for convenience, but very often include work in engraving and drypoint as well, and sometimes have no etching at all. Woodcut, a type of print, is the earliest printmaking technique. It was probably first developed as a means of printing patterns on cloth, woodcuts of images on paper developed around 1400 in Japan, and slightly later in Europe. These are the two areas where woodcut has been most extensively used purely as a process for making images without text, the artist draws a design on a plank of wood, or on paper which is transferred to the wood
5.
Drawing
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Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person uses various drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium. A drawing instrument releases small amount of material onto a surface, the most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas, and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or indeed almost anything, the medium has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of the simplest and most efficient means of communicating visual ideas, the wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing one of the most common artistic activities. In addition to its artistic forms, drawing is frequently used in commercial illustration, animation, architecture, engineering. A quick, freehand drawing, usually not intended as a work, is sometimes called a sketch. An artist who practices or works in technical drawing may be called a drafter, Drawing is one of the major forms of expression within the visual arts. It is generally concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper/other material, traditional drawings were monochrome, or at least had little colour, while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. In Western terminology, drawing is distinct from painting, even though similar media often are employed in both tasks, dry media, normally associated with drawing, such as chalk, may be used in pastel paintings. Drawing may be done with a medium, applied with brushes or pens. Drawing is often exploratory, with emphasis on observation, problem-solving. Drawing is also used in preparation for a painting, further obfuscating their distinction. Drawings created for these purposes are called studies, there are several categories of drawing, including figure drawing, cartooning, doodling, free hand and shading. There are also many drawing methods, such as drawing, stippling, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania. A quick, unrefined drawing may be called a sketch, in fields outside art, technical drawings or plans of buildings, machinery, circuitry and other things are often called drawings even when they have been transferred to another medium by printing. Drawing as a Form of Communication Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression and these drawings, known as pictograms, depicted objects and abstract concepts. The sketches and paintings produced in prehistoric times were eventually stylised and simplified, Drawing in the Arts Drawing is used to express ones creativity, and therefore has been prominent in the world of art. Throughout much of history, drawing was regarded as the foundation for artistic practise, initially, artists used and reused wooden tablets for the production of their drawings
6.
Post-Impressionism
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Post-Impressionism is a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction against Impressionists concern for the depiction of light. The movement was led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, the term Post-Impressionism was first used by art critic Roger Fry in 1906. Three weeks later, Roger Fry used the term again when he organized the 1910 exhibition, Manet, the Post-Impressionists were dissatisfied with what they felt was the triviality of subject matter and the loss of structure in Impressionist paintings, though they did not agree on the way forward. Georges Seurat and his followers concerned themselves with Pointillism, the use of tiny dots of colour. Paul Cézanne set out to restore a sense of order and structure to painting, to make of Impressionism something solid and durable and he achieved this by reducing objects to their basic shapes while retaining the saturated colours of Impressionism. The Impressionist Camille Pissarro experimented with Neo-Impressionist ideas between the mid-1880s and the early 1890s, Vincent van Gogh used colour and vibrant swirling brush strokes to convey his feelings and his state of mind. Although they often exhibited together, Post-Impressionist artists were not in agreement concerning a cohesive movement, yet, the abstract concerns of harmony and structural arrangement, in the work of all these artists, took precedence over naturalism. Artists such as Seurat adopted a scientific approach to colour. Younger painters during the early 20th century worked in geographically disparate regions and in various categories, such as Fauvism and Cubism. Most of the artists in Frys exhibition were younger than the Impressionists, Fry later explained, For purposes of convenience, it was necessary to give these artists a name, and I chose, as being the vaguest and most non-committal, the name of Post-Impressionism. This merely stated their position in time relatively to the Impressionist movement, john Rewald limited the scope to the years between 1886 and 1892 in his pioneering publication on Post-Impressionism, From Van Gogh to Gauguin. This volume would extend the period covered to other artistic movements derived from Impressionism, though confined to the late 19th, Rewald focused on such outstanding early Post-Impressionists active in France as van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, and Redon. Pont-Aven School, implying more than that the artists involved had been working for a while in Pont-Aven or elsewhere in Brittany. Symbolism, a highly welcomed by vanguard critics in 1891. Rewald wrote that the term Post-Impressionism is not a precise one. Convenient, when the term is by definition limited to French visual arts derived from Impressionism since 1886, rewalds approach to historical data was narrative rather than analytic, and beyond this point he believed it would be sufficient to let the sources speak for themselves. Rival terms like Modernism or Symbolism were never as easy to handle, for they covered literature, architecture and other arts as well, Symbolism, however, is considered to be a concept which emerged a century later in France, and implied an individual approach
7.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
8.
Pastel
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A pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process, Pastels have been used by artists since the Renaissance, and gained considerable popularity in the 18th century, when a number of notable artists made pastel their primary medium. An artwork made using pastels is called a pastel, Pastel used as a verb means to produce an artwork with pastels, as an adjective it means pale in color. Pastel sticks or crayons consist of powdered pigment combined with a binder. The exact composition and characteristics of an individual pastel stick depends on the type of pastel and it also varies by individual manufacturer. Dry pastels have historically used binders such as gum arabic and gum tragacanth, methyl cellulose was introduced as a binder in the twentieth century. Often a chalk or gypsum component is present and they are available in varying degrees of hardness, the softer varieties being wrapped in paper. Some pastel brands use pumice in the binder to abrade the paper, dry pastel media can be subdivided as follows, Soft pastels, This is the most widely used form of pastel. The sticks have a portion of pigment and less binder. The drawing can be readily smudged and blended, but it results in a proportion of dust. White chalk may be used as a filler in producing pale, Pan Pastels, These are formulated with a minimum of binder in flat compacts and applied with special Soft micropore sponge tools. A 21st-century invention, Pan Pastels can be used for the painting or in combination with soft. Hard pastels, These have a portion of binder and less pigment. These can be used with other pastels for drawing outlines and adding accents, hard pastels are traditionally used to create the preliminary sketching out of a composition. However, the colors are brilliant and are available in a restricted range in contrast to soft pastels. Pastel pencils, These are pencils with a pastel lead and they are useful for adding fine details. In addition, pastels using a different approach to manufacture have been developed, Oil pastels, These have a soft, buttery consistency and they are dense and fill the grain of paper and are slightly more difficult to blend than soft pastels, but do not require a fixative
9.
Aquitaine
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Aquitaine, archaic Guyenne/Guienne was a traditional region of France, and was an administrative region of France until 1 January 2016. It is now part of the new region Nouvelle-Aquitaine and it is situated in the south-western part of Metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It is composed of the five departments of Dordogne, Lot-et-Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes, in the Middle Ages, Aquitaine was a kingdom and a duchy, whose boundaries fluctuated considerably. This has been demonstrated by various Aquitanian names and words that were recorded by the Romans, whether this Aquitanian language was a remnant of a Vasconic language group that once extended much farther, or whether it was generally limited to the Aquitaine/Basque region is not known. The original Aquitania at the time of Caesars conquest of Gaul included the area bounded by the Garonne River, the Pyrenees, the name may stem from Latin aqua, maybe derived from the town Aquae Augustae, Aquae Tarbellicae or just Aquis or as a more general geographical feature. In 392, the Roman imperial provinces were restructured and Aquitania Prima, Aquitania Secunda, accounts of Aquitania during the Early Middle Ages are a blur, lacking precision, but there was much unrest. The Visigoths were called into Gaul as foederati, legalizing their status within the Empire, eventually they established themselves as the de facto rulers in south-west Gaul as central Roman rule collapsed. Visigoths established their capital in Toulouse, but their tenure on Aquitaine was feeble, in 507, they were expelled south to Hispania after their defeat in the Battle of Vouillé by the Franks, who became the new rulers in the area to the south of the Loire. The Roman Aquitania Tertia remained in place as Novempopulania, where a duke was appointed to hold a grip over the Basques and these dukes were quite detached from central Frankish overlordship, sometimes governing as independent rulers with strong ties to their kinsmen south of the Pyrenees. As of 660, the foundations for an independent Aquitaine/Vasconia polity were established by the duke Felix of Aquitaine, a united Basque-Aquitanian realm reached its heyday under Odo the Greats rule. Odo was required to pledge allegiance to the Frankish Charles Martel in exchange for help against the advancing Arabic forces, Basque-Aquitanian self-rule temporarily came to a halt, definitely in 768 after the assassination of Waifer. Seguin, count of Bordeaux and Duke of Vasconia, seemed to have attempted a detachment from the Frankish central authority on Charlemagnes death, the new emperor Louis the Pious reacted by removing him from his capacity, which stirred the Basques into rebellion. Before Pepins death, emperor Louis had appointed a new king in 832, his son Charles the Bald, however scarce, some Frankish population and nobles settled down in regions like Albigeois, Carcassone, Toulouse, and Provence and Lower Rhone. After the death of the king Dagobert I, the Merovingian tenure south of the Loire became largely nominal, with the power being in the hands of autonomous regional leaders. The Franks may have largely assimilated to the preponderant Gallo-Roman culture by the 8th century. Still, in the Battle of Toulouse, the Aquitanian duke Odo is said to be leading an army of Aquitanians, on the other hand, the Franks didnt mix with the Basques, keeping separate paths. Recorded evidence points to their deployment across Aquitaine in a capacity as a mainstay of the Dukes forces. Romans are cited as living in the cities of Aquitaine, as opposed to the Franks, in 1058, the Duchy of Vasconia and Aquitaine merged under the rule of William VIII, Duke of Aquitaine
10.
Etching
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Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types of material, as a method of printmaking, it is, along with engraving, the most important technique for old master prints, and remains in wide use today. In a number of variants such as microfabrication etching and photochemical milling it is a crucial technique in much modern technology. In traditional pure etching, a plate is covered with a waxy ground which is resistant to acid. The artist then scratches off the ground with an etching needle where he or she wants a line to appear in the finished piece. The échoppe, a tool with an oval section, is also used for swelling lines. The plate is dipped in a bath of acid, technically called the mordant or etchant. The acid bites into the metal where it is exposed, leaving behind lines sunk into the plate, the remaining ground is then cleaned off the plate. The plate is inked all over, and then the ink wiped off the surface, the plate is then put through a high-pressure printing press together with a sheet of paper. The paper picks up the ink from the lines, making a print. The process can be repeated many times, typically several hundred impressions could be printed before the shows much sign of wear. The work on the plate can also be added to by repeating the whole process, Etching has often been combined with other intaglio techniques such as engraving or aquatint. The process as applied to printmaking is believed to have been invented by Daniel Hopfer of Augsburg, Hopfer was a craftsman who decorated armour in this way, and applied the method to printmaking, using iron plates. Apart from his prints, there are two examples of his work on armour, a shield from 1536 now in the Real Armeria of Madrid. The switch to copper plates was made in Italy. On the other hand, the handling of the ground and acid need skill and experience, prior to 1100 AD, the New World Hohokam independently utilized the technique of acid etching in marine shell designs. Jacques Callot from Nancy in Lorraine made important technical advances in etching technique and he developed the échoppe, a type of etching-needle with a slanting oval section at the end, which enabled etchers to create a swelling line, as engravers were able to do. Callot also appears to have responsible for an improved, harder, recipe for the etching ground
