15TH CENTURY ENGRAVED WOODBLOCK/CUT FOUND. NEED ADVICE!...

I still think we are seeing more detail in the blocks than would show in the printing, particularly when mediated further by the stereotype matrix. My partner, who has studied and made prints, looked at the two and said it was perfectly consistent with the differences he had seen between blocks he had made and then printed. All of the basic lines look the same. The block looks busier/fuzzier because we can see the graver cuts that trail off into the non-printing recesses, and the photo of the block is poor and pixelated.

There is also the possibility that these blocks were used to create the stereotype plate, and that plate was printed so many times that by the 1853 7th edition it had lost some of the finer details.