Feder und Pinsel in Tusche

22:36 Feb 3, 2012 

@ Helen

Aren't they just. Thanks!

20:19 Feb 3, 2012 

Alles klar! All is well. These discussion posts can be worse than text messages at times!

20:03 Feb 3, 2012 

Oh, no, please, this is a misunderstanding! My remark was not meant personally or ironic at all! An art historian myself, I appreciate and respect your contributions very much as of extremely high quality. I am awfully sorry if I come across as that arrogant.

19:14 Feb 3, 2012 

I am not vague as an art historian or as a translator, and I don't appreciate your expressed sentiment remotely. I don't at all see the need to be so personal. I translate auction catalogues and this is the terminology that the (very prestigious) auction house happens to ask me to adopt in such circumstances. And since this is such a beast here that our Asker is translating, it seems rather apposite. Graphite is considered quite a misnomer in certain circles, but that is another argument altogether.

18:32 Feb 3, 2012 

Hi Helen, well, I think you are correct in this context. I am speaking here less from an art historian's than from a conservator's perspective. Art historians are often deplorably vague when it comes to the material aspects of a work of art. (I know what the query was...:) ). Of course I can't change a whole subject's terminology in one fell sweep, but sometimes its tempting to just mention that interdisciplinary improvement of terms is possible with today's research at hand...Sorry for the detour, everyone, & kind regards to you, Helen.

16:50 Feb 3, 2012 

It is fine to leave it as 'pencil' - Bleistift, though this is not the term being queried, which is 'Feder' und Pinsel in Tusche. This is for a caption so brevity is expected. If it were 'coloured pencil', for instance, it would say so in the GER: Farbstift.

15:00 Feb 3, 2012 

It might be worth adding "graphite" to "pen", as the source caption is precise about this. The caption "pen" is often kept deliberately vague, because identification of a pen type may be difficult for older (e.g. Renaissance) drawings. In this case it can be assumed that "Bleistift" means "graphite pencil", commonly known under this name and frequently used by artists at the time.