This is an ongoing effort to create an illustrated version of Sylvester Koehler’s 1892 exhibition. For the first time ever, this archival document is available as an accessible and interactive web page with links to illustrated object records. Many of the works Koehler selected for the exhibition are included here, but it has not been possible to identify everything in the show. The amount of material Koehler gathered—both at the time of the exhibition and in subsequent years—is far greater than what ultimately went on view. Some pieces were returned to lenders. Some may have been discarded. Some have yet to be identified, while others cannot be identified.

Koehler had a wide network and drew on many sources for the exhibition. He included objects from the MFA’s collection and many works from his own extensive holdings, but he also drew on collections loaned to the MFA in 1892 that are now held by other institutions. These included the Gray Collection, now at the Harvard Art Museums, and parts of the Marrs Collection, now at the Worcester Art Museum. Koehler also likely borrowed from his close friend, the great New York print collector Henry Sewall, whose collection came to the MFA in 1897. (That collection is now named for Harvey D. Parker, the Boston hotelier whose bequest made the purchase possible.) The result is that, in some cases, there are as many as three or four different impressions of a print that could have been on view in the show. The curators have made their best guesses, but on balance have steered toward works now held by the MFA, unless they are certain that the exhibition featured a work from elsewhere. For these entries, and for entries describing more than one distinct object, click on the small i icon to the right of the text to open a small menu with additional links.

This web page follows the text of the 1892 catalogue exactly. Spelling, grammar, nomenclatures, and stylistic choices have been left intact.

You can also read a digital facsimile of the catalogue, scanned from an original in the collection of the MFA’s William Morris Hunt Library, on Internet Archive.

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Table of Contents

• Introduction
• List of business houses who have contributed to this exhibition
• A. The Old Processes
• • I. Relief Processes
  • II. Intaglio Processes
  • III. Planographic Processes
• B. Substitute Processes
• C. Photographic Processes
• D. Photo-Mechanical Processes
• • I. Technical Methods
  • II. Results
• E. Drawing for Photo-Mechanical Process Work

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Museum of Fine Arts, Print Department

Exhibition Illustrating the Technical Methods of the Reproductive Arts from the XV Century to the Present Time with Special Reference to the Photo-Mechanical Processes

January 8 to March 6, 1892

Boston: Printed for the Museum by Alfred Mudge & Son, 24 Franklin Street. 1892.

Introduction.

The present exhibition is principally intended to give an idea of the stage of development reached by the marvellous processes for producing printable blocks and plates, known under the collective name of The Photo-Mechanical Processes, and to illustrate the means by which they attain their results, so far as that can be done within the limits imposed, and without divulging the many trade-secrets which still, either really or apparently, envelop many of them.

As these modern processes, however, cannot be understood without some knowledge of those that preceded them, it has been thought advisable to add illustrations also of those of the older processes of which specimens were obtainable. The exhibition offers, therefore, a succinct history of the means used to produce blocks and plates from which impressions can be made in a press or otherwise, from the 15th century, when these processes were first extensively practiced, down to our own time. Attentive study of the material submitted will show that the technical aim, steadily held in view, has been and is the substitution of the forces of nature for the activity of man. This aim is most clearly expressed in the announcement of the prize for a scientifically reliable reproductive process, offered by the Due de Luynes in 1856. “It is,” says this announcement, “with a view to hastening the moment, so much desired, when the processes of printing or of lithography shall permit the reproduction of the marvels of photography, without the intervention of the human hand in the design, that M. le Duc de Luynes... has established a prize.” This aim has not, indeed, been reached absolutely as yet, but considerable progress towards it has been made, as this exhibition testifies. Concerning the possibility of final achievement, the wisest course will be to abstain from all speculation, and to hold ourselves ready to accept such answer as the future may bring. Nor would it be permissible here to enter upon a discussion as to the effect which these new processes may have upon the older ones. It may be said, however, that the two differ very decidedly in their intellectual aims, however closely they may agree in the technical. The old processes, in their highest development, are artistic and give free scope to the personal element. The modern photo-mechanical processes, in their highest development, are scientific, and seek to eliminate the personal element. The former, therefore, are — or at least may be — themselves a form of art, while the latter are its servants, whose merit is measured by the degree to which they find it possible to repress their own individuality.

The exhibition is divided into five parts: — A. The older processes, invented up to the beginning of the 19th century. B. Substitute processes, which try to reach the results of the older processes at a less expenditure of manual labor, but as yet without photography. C. Photographic processes, which either depend entirely on the action of light upon certain substances for the making of the picture as well as for its reproduction, or which reproduce and multiply an already existing picture by the same means. D. Photo-mechanical processes, the aim of which it is to produce, either from nature or from works of art, by photographic action, plates, blocks, or moulds, to be used for the multiplying of pictures in the press, that is to say, by mechanical means. E. Drawing for photo-mechanical process-work. This division does not come strictly within the scope of the exhibition, as it represents a purely artistic activity preliminary to the process itself. As, however, this kind of drawing is almost wholly an outcome of the photo-mechanical processes, — although its first efforts were prompted by the substitute processes, — it has a well-defined right to a place here. The “halftone processes” have, indeed, done away with the necessity for much process drawing, but it is still largely practiced, and some knowledge of the means employed may, therefore, be of use to young artists, many of whom find a first source of income in the making of drawings of this sort.

The technical notes under the different headings of the catalogue are necessarily of the most meagre kind. They will, however, be sufficient, in connection with the specimens shown, to give an idea of the principles involved, which is all that is aimed at. In examining the specimens, it must be borne in mind that the purpose of the exhibition is distinctly technical, and that the illustration of technical points had to be made the first consideration, although the beauty of the results reached has also been kept in view wherever it was possible. Finally, it may be well to state that the exhibition does not nearly exhaust the subject with which it deals. The number of processes invented within the last thirty years is almost innumerable. It is believed, however, that most of the successful processes — successful, that is to say, either temporarily or permanently — are represented.

The Museum of Fine Arts is indebted to the U. S. National Museum and, through Prof. C. F. Chandler, to Columbia College, as well as to Miss Laura Norcross, and Miss M. J. Fenderson, of Boston, Mr. Jas. D. Smillie, of New York, Mr. F. E. Ives, of Philadelphia, Mr. T. W. Smillie, of Washington, and Messrs. H. R. Elaney, E. F. Fenollosa, Thomas Gaffield, Geo. A. Goddard, E. H. Greenleaf, Walter F. Lansil, Chas. G. Loring, J. B. Millet, Walter Rowlands, Pierre Thurwanger, and Chas. A. Walker, of Boston, for the loan of valuable specimens. A list of the business houses who have directly contributed to the exhibition is given on p. vi.

The private collection of the undersigned has also been largely drawn upon.

The undersigned will deliver two lectures on the photo-mechanical processes before the Society of Arts, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the evenings of January 14 and 28, at 8 o’clock. The admission to these lectures is free.

S. R. Koehler.

List of business houses who have contributed to this exhibition.

• The John Andrew & Son Co., Boston.
• The Art Publishing Co., Boston.
• E. Bierstadt, New York.
• The Boston Engraving Co., Boston.
• Boussod, Valadon & Co., Paris and New York.
• Crosscup & West, Philadelphia.
• Benjamin Day, New York.
• A. W. Elson & Co., Boston.
• The Gravure-Etching Co., Boston.
• F. Gutekunst, Philadelphia.
• The Heliotype Printing Co., Boston.
• W. Kurtz, New York.
• Little, Brown & Co., Boston.
• Augustus Marshall, Boston.
• The Moss Engraving Co., New York.
• The New York Photogravure Co., New York.
• The Notman Photographic Co., Boston.
• L. Prang & Co., Boston.
• Chas. J. Ross, Burlington, N. J.
• H. G. Smith, Boston.

A. The Old Processes

There are three possibilities in the production of blocks and plates to be used as printing forms in the press, according to which all printing processes are classified as: (i.) Relief processes; (2.) intaglio processes; (3.) planographic processes.

The relief processes produce blocks, generally of wood, but occasionally also of other material, of which those parts which are to carry the printing ink are left standing in relief above the body of the material out of which they are made, while the parts which are to show white in the printed picture are cut away. If such a block is inked on the surface of the parts left standing, care being taken to keep the ink out of the hollows, or parts cut away, and a piece of paper or other suitable material is pressed against the block so inked, the result will be an impression. The printing process, in this case, is a stamping process.

The intaglio processes produce plates, generally of metal, but occasionally also of other material, in which the parts that are to carry the printing ink are intagliated (cut in), so that they form hollows, while those parts which are to show white in the printed picture are left standing. If such a plate is inked so as to fill the intagliated parts with the ink, and, after the surface has been carefully cleaned to remove all superfluous ink from it, a piece of paper or other suitable material is pressed against it, the result will again be an impression. But, instead of a stamping process, the printing operation is, in this case, an embossing process.

The planographic processes (planus, plane, graphein, to write, to grave), finally, use printing surfaces that are, essentially at least, flat. The designs produced upon these surfaces accept the printing ink, whereas those parts which are to show white in the printed picture refuse it under the conditions utilized in the printing process. The production of the designs involves chemical action, and the printing process depends upon physical properties. It stands to reason that, if such a surface is inked under the proper conditions, and a piece of paper or other suitable material is pressed against it, the result, as in the two preceding cases, will be an impression. The materials used as printing surfaces in the older planographic processes are stone (lithography) or metal, commonly zinc (zincography). To these materials the photo-mechanical processes have added glutinous substances (collographic processes).

• 1. Relief block, intaglio plate, and planographic printing surface, in schematic representation, showing how two lines of different width are produced, (a.) by leaving them standing in relief, (b.) by cutting them into the plate, (c.) by drawing them on the surface. Note that in b the lines differ not only in width, but also in depth, and that consequently in the impression produced there must be, not only a difference in width, but also in the quantity of ink deposited on the paper, whereas in a and c, which print from the surface, there is only difference of width. This is one of the reasons why impressions from intaglio plates are richer than those from relief blocks or planographic surfaces.
• 2. Impressions from a relief block, one of them without ink, printed, purposely, with a soft overlay on moist paper, to show that printing from such blocks is a stamping process. In actual printing the impression is kept as flat as possible.
• 3. Impression from an intaglio plate, without ink, to show that printing from such plates is an embossing process. This embossing of the lines, which causes them to stand out above the paper, and to throw a shadow, is another reason of the greater richness of impressions from intagliated plates, as compared with impressions from the surface. Great care is therefore taken in fine printing to prevent the crushing of the lines. (No uninked impression from a planographic surface is shown, as such an impression would produce no result.)
• 4. Positive and negative impressions from a relief block. For the positive impression the block was inked on the surface, as usual; for the negative impression it was inked in the hollows, like an intaglio plate.
• 5. Positive and negative impressions from an intaglio plate. For the positive impression the plate was inked in the hollows, as usual; for the negative impression it was inked on the surface, like a relief block. It will be seen that in these two cases, Nos. 4 and 5, the method of inking and the results reached are the exact opposites. (No such opposite results can be obtained from a planographic surface.)

I. Relief Processes

I. Wood-cutting (and relief engraving on metal).

Printing from relief blocks cut or engraved for the purpose seems to be the oldest method applied to the production of pictures by mechanical means. It may be said that, so far as Europe is concerned, such printing was first more extensively practiced in Germany and the Netherlands about the beginning of the 15th century. The oldest dated pictures printed from relief blocks, so far known, are the “Virgin,” of 1418, in the Brussels Cabinet, and the “St. Christopher,” of 1423, in the possession of Earl Spenser. As a rule, these blocks, from the beginnings of the art to the end of the 18th century, were executed on wood—such as cherry, pear, etc., and in later times boxwood—cut in the direction of the fiber, that is to say, on planks. The tools used were knives. The aim of these wood-cuts, properly so called, was the reproduction of designs in black lines on a light ground, or, in other words, of drawings in lines. As these cuts were in many cases actual facsimiles of such drawings, they are commonly spoken of as black-line facsimile work. The drawings were usually executed upon the plank in pen and ink, or sometimes on thin paper, which was pasted on the wood face downward, and the task of the wood-cutter was confined to the cutting away of the wood between the lines of the drawing. Sometimes relief blocks were executed also on metal, in which case gravers were used instead of knives.

• 6. Methods of cutting wood for relief blocks: (a.) in the direction of the fiber or grain, as for the old wood-cut (b.) across the fiber or grain, as for modern wood-engraving.
• 7. Knives used by the old wood-cutters. Enlarged from the representations of tools which often accompany the monograms of the wood-cutters on old cuts. Figure a is the most common form.
• 8. Knives used by Papillon. From his “Traité de la gravure en bois,” Paris: 1766.
• 9. A 16th Century Wood-cutter at Work. The oldest representation of the kind known. From Jost Amman’s “Beschreibung aller Stände,” Francfort: 1568. (Facsimile.)
• 10. Papillon’s Way of Holding the Knife. From his “Traité,” Paris: 1766.
• 11. A cut wood-block, probably of the 15th century and of French origin, with a (modern) impression from it.
• 12. A 15th Century Printer at Work, showing the press and the method of inking with balls. (The earliest impressions from wood-cuts were probably obtained by rubbing the paper on the back, as it lay on the block.)
• 13. The St. Christopher of 1423. (Facsimile.)
• 14. Four cuts from Dürer’s “Little Passion.” Published 1511.
• 15. The Virgin with the Apple, adored by Angels. Designed by Dürer. Dated 1518.
• 16. Battlescene. From “Der Weisskunig.” Designed by Hans Burgkmair about 1510.
• 17. Four cuts from Holbein’s “Imagines mortis.” Cut by Hans Lützelburger. From the Basel edition of 1554. (The first edition is Lyons: 1538.)
• 18. Portrait of Sebastian Sergius. Italian wood-cut. Published at Verona, 1540.
• 19. The Temptation of Christ. Cut by C. Jegher, about 1630, from a design by Rubens.
• 20. Six Rewards of Merit. Cut by J. F. G. Unger (died 1804), from designs by J. W. Meil.

2. Old White-Line Work. (Dotted prints; manière criblée.)

The relief blocks engraved on metal, mentioned in the preceding paragraph, imitated drawings in black lines, like the wood-cuts. The natural result, however, of the graver, when used for the production of relief blocks, is the white line. The graver removes the wood or metal along its path. If, after a line with the graver has thus been drawn, the surface of the block is inked, it prints black, while the line, being free from ink, shows white. The white line forms the starting point of modern wood-engraving, but it was utilized to some extent also towards the end of the 15th and at the beginning of the 1 6th century, probably by goldsmiths who found it desirable to produce relief blocks for printing, but preferred to use the materials and the tools familiar to them, that is to say, metal and gravers and punches. With the gravers they cut the lines, and with the punches they produced the dots which are seen in many, although by no means in all, of these prints, and from which they have been named dotted prints. These dots, however, are merely an incident, the chief characteristic being that both the dots and the lines are relieved white on a dark ground, the white lines often crossing one another, as in modern wood-engraving, while black lines on a white ground are used only in the high lights, where they cannot be avoided. It is more than likely, therefore, that these blocks were engraved on metal by goldsmiths, and the predilection for ornament apparent in many of them points in the same direction (see No. 22). Occasionally, however, wood was evidently used. An example of dotting on wood is supplied by the block here shown (see No. 11), in its upper left hand corner (upper right in the impression). Another class of old white-line work is illustrated by No. 24.

• 21. St. Ann with the Virgin and Child.
• 22. The Crowning of the Virgin. Colored by hand.
• 23. The Crucifixion. Colored by hand. A very instructive specimen, as it is worked almost entirely in white lines, either parallel or crossing one another.
• 24. St. Francis writing in a Garden.

3. Modern Wood-Engraving.

The old wood-cutter worked with knives on planks, the modern wood-engraver works with gravers and similar tools on wood cut across the grain (see No. 6). The old black-line wood-cuts are essentially facsimiles of drawings. With the introduction of modern wood-engraving the white line came into use, it being, as before stated, the natural result of the graver when used for the production of relief blocks. Furthermore, the white line led to the development of tint-engraving (see No. 39). While, therefore, the old wood-cutter had only one resource, the black line, the modern wood-engraver has three, the black line, the white line, and tints in infinite variety. It was the development of tint engraving which enabled the modern wood-engraver to suggest the effects of painting. The introduction of the graver and of wood cut across the grain, and of their result, the white line, is generally credited to Thomas Bewick (b. 1753, d. 1828), who was the first to make extended use of these means, although isolated attempts in the same direction had been made before. With the introduction of the white line, the methods of placing the design on the block also underwent a change. The drawings in line were first superseded by washed drawings, and these by photographs on the wood. As washes and photographs naturally give masses only, it was left to the engraver to find his own lines, so that his work made much greater demands upon his skill than that of the old wood-cutter. In the specimens shown (Nos. 40-53), the rich resources of modern wood-engraving are well illustrated. No. 40 is essentially white-line engraving in Bewick’s manner. Nos. 41 and 42 are black-line work from drawings. No. 43 is partly black-line work in imitation of copper-plate engraving, in combination with white line. Nos. 44 to 53 show all the means at command in various combinations.

• 25. A box-wood block, as prepared for engravers. The graver lines cut into the block, blackened with ink, in one of its corners, show clearly the production of the white line.
• 26. A wood-block with a washed drawing on it.
• 27. A wood-block with a photograph from nature.
• 28. Tools used by wood-engravers. The printed sheet shows the great variety of tools from which the engraver can choose, not only according to the kind of work to be done, but also according to his individuality. The gravers formed part of the outfit of the late Frederic Juengling.
• 29. Way of holding the graver.
• 30. Routing-machine. Used for cutting away large portions of the block that are to show white in the impression.
• 31. Modern Wood-Engraver at Work. From Harper’s Magazine.
• 32. Engraved wood-block, with proof from it. From the John Andrew & Son Co.’s establishment. (The original from which the block was engraved hangs above the case.)
• 33. Electrotype from the block No. 32. Wood-engravings are almost invariably printed from electrotypes (except for proofs), as the block itself could not stand the wear and tear of a large edition. To obtain an electrotype, a wax mould is made from the engraved block, and upon this copper is deposited by means of electricity. The copper shell thus obtained is backed with type-metal, and mounted on a wooden block.
• 34. A Modern Printer printing Proofs at the Hand-press. From Harper’s Monthly. — A modern hand-press.
• 35. A steam press. All illustrated magazines and books, except occasionally a “limited edition,” are printed from electrotypes on steam presses which do the inking automatically, and throw off from 600 to 1,000 sheets of from 4 to 64 pages per hour. — In the Press Room. From Harper’s Monthly.
• 36. Proof and print from a wood engraving, “Morning on the Marsh,” by Geo. A. Teel (The John Andrew & Son Co.), after J. Francis Murphy. The proof was printed from the original block, on Japanese paper, on the hand press. The print is from an electrotype, printed on the steam press, on book paper.
• 37. Underlaying and overlaying. If all engraved blocks and all presses were mathematically true, the pressure sufficient on all parts of the block, and the engraver always absolutely successful in all parts of his work, the printing might begin without further preparation as soon as the block is finished. As, however, these conditions are never realized, a good deal depends upon the “making” by the printer. This consists in placing pieces of paper under the block (underlaying) and arranging others in the press so that they exercise unequal pressure on the block from above (overlaying). The process is illustrated by the various impressions shown, with the “underlay” and the “overlay” used.
• 38. The Ruling Machine (a.) is largely used for engraving straight and waved lines, radiating lines, circles, etc. The sample sheet (b.) shows the various kinds of work it is capable of doing. In (c.) the foreground is machine-ruled in one direction, the background in two directions. In (d.) all the straight lines in the piece of machinery represented are machine work.
• 39. The Resources of Modern Wood-Engraving (see p. 5). First card: (a.) A head in black line; (b.) a head in white line; (c.) a bit of foreground in black line; (d.) a bit of foreground in white line. Second card: Tints, flat and gradated, consisting of parallel lines, straight and waved, and mottled tints, produced by dots and other means. In these tints the proportion of white and black produces value, whereas the character of the lines and dots used produces quality.
• 40. Hunting Scene. Engraved by Dr. Alexander Anderson (b. 1775, d. 1870), after Riedinger. (Reproduction.)
• 41. Portrait of Ernst Keil. Drawn on wood from a photograph by Adolf Neumann; engraved in the establishment of Aug. Neumann.
• 42. The Round Table of Frederic the Great at Sanssouci. Engraved by A. Vogel, from a drawing by Adolf Menzel.
• 43. Scene from Jerusalem Delivered. Engraved by C. Nesbit, 1818, from a drawing by J. Thurston.
• 44. From Dante’s Paradiso. Engraved by Pannemaker-Doms, from a washed drawing on the block by Gustave Dore.
• 45. The Orphan. Engraved by Baude from a painting by Henner.
• 46. Sleeping Girl. Engraved by W. J. Linton, from a painting by Elihu Vedder.
• 47. Winifred Dysart. Engraved by Wm. B. Closson, from a painting by George Fuller, photographed on the wood.
• 48. The Romany Girl. Engraved by Frederic Juengling, from a painting by George Fuller, photographed on the wood.
• 49. The Close of Day. Engraved by Wm. Miller, from a painting by George Inness, photographed on the wood.
• 50. Miss Bradley Martin. Engraved by T. Johnson, from a painting by Carolus Duran, photographed on the wood.
• 51. Evening. Engraved by Wm. Jay Dana, from a painting by Corot, photographed on the wood. The dry-point has been used largely on this block, especially in the foreground.
• 52. Old Well. Engraved by Elbridge Kingsley, from a painting by J. Francis Murphy, photographed on the wood. There is considerable roulette work in this engraving.
• 53. Portrait of Thomas Jefferson. Engraved by G. Kruell, from a painting by Gilbert Stuart, photographed on the wood. Shown in two states.

4. Modern Plank Cutting. For very large work, such as posters, planks are still used, but the cutting is done with instruments called scrives (hollow gravers, pine tools) and gouges, instead of knives, and with machines.

• 54. Impression from an engraved plank.
• 55. Scrives and a gouge.

5. Relief engraving applied to color-printing.

Color-printing from relief blocks may be said to be older than all other kinds of printing, as woven stuffs were stamped in colors long before the 15th century. It is worth noting also that the oldest book with a printed date at present known, Fust and Schoeffer’s “Psalter” of 1457, is at the same time the first dated specimen of color-printing. The printing in this book is, however, confined to ornamental letters. The oldest dated specimens of picture-printing in two colors (black and a tint) are a “St. Christopher” (see No. 57) and a “Venus and Cupid,” from designs by Lucas Cranach, of the year 1506. Such prints in black and one or more tints or in tints only (chiaroscuros), were produced in considerable numbers during the 16th and 17th centuries. Among the earliest prints in positive colors are Jost de Necker’s “Portrait of Jacob Fugger,” and Altdorfer’s “Beautiful Mary of Ratisbonne,” both of the earlier part of the 16th century. Relief blocks for color-printing are often engraved on metal. The specimens shown sufficiently explain the way in which the colors are printed one upon the other to produce the final result.

• 56. A set of seven wood-blocks, cut by F. W. Gubitz, Berlin, about 1815, for a color-print in seven printings, with an impression from them.
• 57. St. Christopher. Chiaroscuro from two blocks, from a design by Lucas Cranach. Dated 1506. Shown in two states, black only, and black with a tint.
• 58. The Death of Ananias. Chiaroscuro from three blocks, by Ugo da Carpi, after Raphael. 1518. (Date cut off.)
• 59. The Adoration of the Magi. Chiaroscuro from three blocks, by Giuseppe Nicola Vicentino (16th century), after Parmegiano.
• 60. Peace and Plenty. Chiaroscuro from two blocks, dated 1627, by Bartolomeo Coriolano, after Guido Reni.
• 61. Female Street Sweeper and Child. Set of progressive proofs from a chiaroscuro of three blocks, by Branston, after W. M. Craig. From Savage’s “Hints on Decorative Printing,” London: 1822.
• 62. Landscape. Color-print from fourteen blocks, by J. Thompson, after J. Varley. From Savage’s “Hints,” London: 1822.
• 63. Sure of her Victory. Color-print from seven blocks, after R. Lotter. Engraved in the establishment of R. Bong, Berlin.

6. Japanese Wood-Cutting.

The reproductive artists of Japan still adhere to the methods which were in vogue in Europe in the 15th century; that is to say, they use planks and knives, draw their designs on sheets of thin paper which they paste, face downward, on the wood, and obtain their impressions by rubbing the back of the sheet as it lies on the block. The printing colors used are water colors, and the blocks are charged with them by brushes. Most of the Japanese wood-cuts are color-prints requiring a large number of impressions. A specimen in the U. S. National Museum has 33 printings, and according to Prof. Fenollosa as many as 120 printings have been used. This does not, however, imply the cutting of an equal number of blocks, since, owing to the method of inking, one and the same block may be used repeatedly to produce different results, by painting it partially and in different parts with different colors. Gradations are also produced, not by the wood-cutter, but by the printer on the block, with the brush or by wiping.

• 64. Cut Japanese wood-block. One of the blocks used for printing No. 69.
• 65. Japanese knife, chisels, etc., used by wood-cutters.
• 66. Japanese Wood-cutter at Work. Photograph from a Japanese water-color drawing.
• 67. Japanese Printer at Work. Photograph from a Japanese water-color drawing.
• 68. Baren. The instrument used by the printer to obtain the impression by rubbing the back of the sheet after it has been laid down on the block.
• 69. Set of progressive proofs for a design for a fan, printed in six colors.
• 70. Japanese wood-cut. End of the 18th century.
• 71. Japanese wood-cut. First half of the 19th century.

II. Intaglio Processes.

The various intaglio processes differ so markedly from one another in their results, that it is difficult, at first sight, to recognize their relationship. There is no resemblance whatever, apparently, between a line engraving and a mezzotint. Nevertheless these two processes have this in common with all other processes belonging to the same class, that the ink is forced into cavities formed in the plate, — instead of being laid on the surface, as in printing from relief blocks, — although in the one case the cavities may be easily measurable, while in the other they are almost microscopic. According to the means of delineation used, the intaglio processes may be divided into four classes: — (1.) Those working principally with lines (line engraving, dry-pointing without bur, etching in lines); (2.) those working principally with dots or a grain (punching, imitation of crayon drawing, stippling, soft-ground etching, the sand-manner); (3.) those which more or less try to do away with lines and dots as such, substituting therefore masses which have the appearance of continuous flat or gradated tints (dry-pointing with bur, aquatinting, mezzotinting, lavis, etc.); (4.) those methods in which the various means just named are combined. The plates used in these processes are usually of metal, such as copper, copper-alloy, steel, or zinc, but glass (for etching), and wood, celluloid, etc. (for engraving), have also been used.

I. Graver Work. (Line engraving.)

This, being the most difficult, has always been considered also the most noble of the various ways of engraving. The process is as follows: — An etching-ground (see under “Etching”) is laid on the plate, and upon this the outlines of the design are traced or transferred by pressure. After these outlines have been delicately cut into the plate through the ground with a sharp steel point, the ground is removed, and the work is executed on the bare plate with gravers or burins. Besides these the engraver uses also the scraper, to remove the bur (see under “Dry-pointing”) thrown up by the graver, and the burnisher, to burnish the plate if that should become necessary. The dry-point is also employed sometimes for the most delicate part of the work, but merely as an auxiliary of the graver, and not as an instrument having an individuality of its own. The oldest dated plate engraved with the burin, so far known, is of the year 1446. The specimens shown in this division (Nos. 77-90) are all pure graver work. The term “line engraving” generally applied to work of this kind is somewhat misleading, as dots made with the graver are very often used in it in combination with line-work.

• 72. Copper plate.
• 73. Engraver’s tools: — (a.) Gravers, one with handle, three without handles; (b.) scraper; (c.) burnisher.
• 74. Way of Holding the Graver. From Bosse’s “Traité,” Paris: 1645.
• 75. A 17th Century Printer at Work. From Bosse’s “Traité.”
• 76. Modern copper-plate press.
• 77. The Sibyl showing the Madonna to the Emperor Augustus. By the Master E. S., known also as the Master of 1466.
• 78. Salamon Profeta. By an unknown Florentine engraver of the 15th century.
• 79. Part of a Roman Triumph. Unfinished. By Andrea Mantegna (b. 1431, d. 1506).
• 80. The Flight into Egypt. By Martin Schongauer (b. 1450? d. 1491?).
• 81. Adam and Eve. Dated 1504. By Albrecht Dürer.
• 82. The Virgin seated upon Clouds. By Marcantonio Raimondi (b. 1475?, d. 1534).
• 83. The Marriage at Cana. By Hans Sebald Beham (b. 1500, d. 1550).
• 84. Ornamental Composition. Dated 1544. By Hans Sebald Beham.
• 85. The Prodigal Son. Dated 1540. By Hans Sebald Beham.
• 86. Science. By Hendrick Goltzius (b. 1558, d. 1616).
• 87. St. Francis in Prayer. Dated 161 3. By F. Villamena.
• 88. Portrait of Pierre Seguier. Dated 1639. By Claude Mellan.
• 89. Portrait of Pompone de Bellievre. Engraved 1657. By Robert Nanteuil, after Charles Le Brun.
• 90. The Little Physicist. Dated 1761. Engraved by J. G. Wille after Gaspar Netscher.
• 91. Portrait of a Man. After Rubens. Engraved on wood, with graver and dry-point, by Wm. Miller. The proofs were printed from an electrotype, retouched with the dry-point.

2. Dry-Pointing

Dry-pointing — so called because the work of the point is not followed by the use of a fluid, as in etching, — is executed upon the bare plate with steel points, held like a pencil. It is, indeed, simply scratching on copper. A scratch made with a point does not remove the metal, but turns it over alongside of the furrow, producing a ridge which rises above the plate, and is called the bur.

This bur retains the ink when the plate is wiped after it has been inked, and causes the rich, velvety blacks characteristic of most dry-point plates. When these blacks are not wanted, the bur can be removed by scraping, in which case the ink is retained only by the furrows. There are, therefore, two kinds of dry-point work: — with and without bur. A very characteristic mark, by which dry- pointing can often be detected, is the white line produced by the back of the bur in printing. As the back of the bur stands above the plate in relief, it is, or at least may be, wiped clean by the hand of the printer, and the result is a white line stamped into the paper, and running parallel to the furrow out of which the bur was thrown up. These white lines, however, are not always apparent, as the ink, if the wiping is done gently and the bur is low, may hide them. Dry-pointing is probably quite as old as engraving. Dürer executed several plates in this way, but the first artist of note to use the dry-point extensively was Rembrandt. All the specimens shown are pure dry-point, that is to say, no etching was used on the plates from which they were printed. On some of them the graver has, however, been employed (see No. 97), but merely as a more vigorous dry-point, and with a view to utilizing the bur thrown up by it.

• 92. A dry-pointed plate, “Portrait Study,” with a set of progressive proofs from it. By Jas. D. Smillie, N. A.
• 93. Points used for dry-pointing, one round, the other ground flat, with a knife edge.
• 94. The Holy Family. By Dürer. Executed, probably, about 1512.
• 95. Youth and Death. By Rembrandt. Dated 1639. The bur has either been removed, or has worn off entirely.
• 96. The Triumph of Mordecai. By Rembrandt.
• 97. The Three Crosses. By Rembrandt. The white lines mentioned above are very apparent in this impression.
• 98. Portrait of Jan Six. By Rembrandt. Dated 1647.
• 99. Haarlem. By Charles Storm van’s Gravesande.
• 100. The Towing Path. By Francis Seymour Haden.
• 101. The Fisherman’s Home. By Charles Vanderhoef.
• 102. Head of a Girl. By Miss M. Louise McLaughlin. The white lines, although delicate, are quite apparent in this proof, and, as the paper is soft, the impression made by some of the ridges of bur may be seen on the back.
• 103. Pansies. By Jas. D. Smillie, N. A.

3. Etching

Etching marks the first attempt to substitute the forces of nature for the activity of man in the production of printable plates. In graver work the hollows which are to hold the ink are cut by hand. In etching this operation is performed by chemical means, or sometimes by electrical action. To make an etching, a metal plate is covered with an etching ground, consisting of wax and resinous substances. There are solid grounds, which are melted on the heated plate and distributed by dabbers or rollers, grounds in the shape of paste, which are similarly laid, and fluid grounds, which are flowed on the plate and allowed to dry on it. If lines are drawn through this ground with steel points, so that each stroke lays bare the copper, and the plate is then exposed to the action of a mordant, the lines are bitten into the plate by corrosion, the rest of the plate being protected by the ground, which is not affected by the mordant. A plate thus bitten can be printed, after the ground has been washed off, like any other intaglio plate. There are many mordants, but the most common is nitric acid diluted with water. The biting is either done in a tray, in which case the back and the margin of the plate must be protected from the action of the mordant by varnishing, or the plate itself is converted into a tray by building up on its margin a wall of wax, which holds the mordant poured on to it. The width and depth of the lines, and therefore the gradations in the result, depend on the size of the points used and the time of exposure to the mordant. The effect of varying length of exposure is generally controlled by a process called “stopping out.” The drawing having been completed, the plate is exposed to the action of the mordant until those lines which are to print lightest have been sufficiently bitten. It is then washed and these lines are painted over with varnish, that is to say “stopped out.” The plate is then again exposed to the action of the mordant, and the biting continued in the lines which have not been stopped out. This operation can, of course, be repeated, and thus as many gradations secured as may be needed. Etching was probably first used for the production of printable plates by the Hopfers, a German family of artists, about the beginning of the 16th century. All the specimens shown in this division, except No. 112, are pure etchings, executed without the aid of graver or dry-point.

• 104. A plate, one third bare, one third grounded, one third grounded and smoked, i. e., blackened by smoke to get rid of the glitter of the metal.
• 105. A plate, grounded and smoked, with a design traced upon it, and partly drawn through the ground.
• 106. A ball of etching ground.
• 107. Dabber (a.) and Roller (b.)used for laying the ground.
• 108. Wax torch, for smoking the ground.
• 109. Etching points.
• 110. Etching tray.
• 111. Etching scale, showing the result of the use of points of various sizes, and of stopping out.
• 112. Etched plate (copper alloy), “Marine,” by W. F. Lansil, with an impression from it. (There is some dry-pointing in the sky.)
• 113. Etched plate (zinc), “Sheep,” after Berghem, with an impression from it.
• 114. Etching on glass. Impression from a glass plate, etched with hydrofluoric acid.
• 115. An Etcher’s Studio in the 18th Century. From Bosse’s “Traité,” edition of 1745.
• 116. A Modern Etcher at Work. “Portrait of Mr. Peter Moran,” by H. R. Poore. Mr. Moran appears left-handed, as the drawing was not reversed on the plate.
• 117. A Modern Etcher taking a Proof. Wood-engraving by Baude, after Mathey. From Harper’s Bazar.
• 118. Rape of a Young Woman. By Dürer. Dated 1516. Etched on iron.
• 119. Decorative design. By Wendel Dietterlin. 1593.
• 120. Titlepage (1678). — The Good Samaritan (from a series). By Jonas Umbach.
• 121. The Holy Family. By Guido Reni (b. 1579, d. 1642).
• 122. Rest on the Flight to Egypt. By Simone Cantarini (b. 1612, d. 1648).
• 123. Portrait of Justus Suttermans. By Van Dyck (b. 1599, d. 1641).
• 124. Jesus appearing to the Disciples. By Rembrandt. Dated 1650.
• 125. Studies of Elephants. By F. Nerly. Dated 1828.
• 126. Dartmouth Salt Works. By R. Swain Gifford, N. A. Etched on zinc.
• 127. Business Neglected. By John G. Brown, N. A.
• 128. Sketch, made at a lecture on etching. By Walter Shirlaw, N. A.
• 129. A Bit of Brook with some Sheep. By Jas. D. Smillie, N. A.

4. Forwarding by etching.

Nos. 77-90 illustrated pure graver work. Very few plates, however, are to-day executed entirely by the graver. Much of the work is done by etching, or else first etched, that is to say, “forwarded by etching,” and then gone over or trimmed with the burin, to make it harmonize with the engraved parts of the plate. When figures and landscape occur together, the latter is generally etched, while the flesh of the figures is left entirely to the graver. The work of Woollet and the other celebrated English landscape engravers is largely etching. In portraits the hair and the drapery, and sometimes parts of the flesh, are laid in by etching, and the work is then carried to a finish by rebiting, the graver, and the dry-point. The Museum is quite rich in working proofs from such engravings, showing the progress of the work, but as they are mostly of large size, only a few can be shown. According to Bartsch, forwarding by etching was first practiced in the 17th century.

• 130. Portrait of Lincoln. Unfinished steel-plate, by S. A. Schoff. The head shows the laying in with acid. On the drapery there is heavy graver work. The plate has been covered with wax to protect it from rusting.
• 131. Portrait of Horace Bushnell. Engraved by S. A. Schoff. Set of working proofs from the first etching to the finished state.
• 132. Ariadne. Engraved by A. B. Durand, after J. Vanderlyn. Only two working states are shown, the first, pure etching, and the last, before lettering. The flesh is pure graver work.

5. Etchings finished with graver and dry-point.

Nos. 1 18-129 illustrated pure etching. Comparatively few “etchings,” however, are done entirely by such simple means. In most cases the etcher finds it desirable to finish his plate with the dry-point (with or without bur), or with the graver. These instruments are used, not only to remedy defects, but to reach the effects aimed at, which etching alone will not always secure. The reproductive etcher, whose task it is to give as correct an idea as possible of the original before him, finds it still more imperative to utilize all means at his command. Very few etchings from paintings, therefore, if they aim to give more than the outlines of the composition, are entirely the work of the mordant.

• 133. Christ crowned with Thorns. By Annibale Carracci. Dated 1606. Etching and graver.
• 134. Christ Preaching. By Rembrandt. Etching and dry-point with bur.
• 135. Entrance to a Wood. By Waterloo (b. 1618?, d. 1662?). Etching strengthened with the graver. Worn impression, purposely chosen, as the deeper graver touches still show black in the surrounding masses of gray produced by the worn etched lines.
• 136. The Path to the Shore. By R. Swain Gifford, N. A. Etching, with some dry-point work, without bur, in the distance and sky.
• 137. Near the Coast. By R. Swain Gifford, N. A. As this is really a reproductive etching, from a painting by the etcher, there is much dry-point work, without bur, in it, especially in the sky.
• 138. The Prelude. By S. A. Schoff, from a painting by Charles Sprague Pearce. Two states are shown, the first, pure etching, and the last, finished with graver and dry-point.

6. Punching (opus mallei, work of the hammer),

Punching is the forerunner of the later stipple engraving. The tools used are steel punches of various kinds, which are driven into the plate by the blows of a small hammer. The process — but little practiced — was probably invented by some goldsmith, whose craft made him familiar with the use of the punch. Comparatively many of the plates produced by this process are the work of goldsmiths, and represent patterns for their use.

• 139. St. John. By Giulio Campagnola (b. 1481). Punching in combination with engraved lines.
• 140. Design for a Vessel. By Paul Flint or Vlindt, goldsmith (flourished 1592-1620).
• 141. Portrait of P. C. Hooft. By James Lutma, goldsmith (d. about 1685). The impression shown is washed with India ink in the shadows.

7. Imitation of Crayon Drawing

Imitation of crayon drawing aims, as its name indicates, to reproduce drawings, more especially those in red chalk, with all the peculiarities due to the material and the paper used. The tools of the crayon engraver are manifold, — roulettes or little toothed wheels of various kinds, points and gravers, both simple and multiple, punches with one or more points, — and all these are employed, sometimes on an etching ground, for biting, sometimes on the bare metal. As a rule the plate is carried forward as much as possible by the aid of the mordant, and the finishing is done on the bare copper. The invention of crayon engraving is credited to Gilles Demarteau (b. 1722, d. 1776), although, like most other inventions, it has been contested.

• 142. The Tools used by Crayon Engravers. From Bosse’s “Traité,” edition of 1758.
• 143. Roulettes.
• 144. Specimen sheet, showing the different kinds of work that can be done with roulettes (and other instruments). For crayon roulettes, see especially Figs. A-F in lower left-hand corner.
• 145. Study of a Head. By Gilles Demarteau, after Raphael.
• 146. A Satyr. By Gilles Demarteau, after Carlo Vanloo.
• 147. Allegory on the Death of the Dauphin. 1767. By Gilles Demarteau, after C. N. Cochin, Jr.
• 148. Antique Ruins. By L. M. Bonnet (b. 1743), after Boucher.
• 149. Drawing copies. Unknown French engraver of the 18th century.

8. Stippling.

This is a refinement of the previous process, fitting it for the reproduction of works other than crayon drawings. The tools used are principally points and gravers, and occasionally roulettes, with which the drawing is executed on an etching ground. It is then bitten in, and afterwards finished with the same tools on the bare plate. In most cases line work is used in combination with stippling. The most celebrated stipple engraver is Bartolozzi (b. 1730, d. 1813). The character of stipple engraving changed considerably in the course of time. For the loose manner of Bartolozzi and his contemporaries, later engravers substituted a formal grouping of graver Hots, bitten to bring them up to color where necessary, and thus produced effects which are often cold and unpleasant, in spite of elegance and perfection of workmanship.

• 150. Preparatory etching for a stipple plate, “The Tempest,” by J. B. Smith, after Romney.
• 151. Lord Mansfield. By Bartolozzi, after Reynolds. 1786. The face and hands pure stipple, the rest largely line work.
• 152. Lord Burghersh. By Bartolozzi, after Reynolds. 1788.
• 153. The Infant Academy. By Francis Haward, after Reynolds. 1783. Almost pure stipple.
• 154. Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse. By Francis Haward, after Reynolds. 1787. One of the most vigorous pieces of stippling ever done.
• 155. Benjamin West. By Caroline Watson, after G. Stuart. 1786. One of the most delicate pieces of stippling in the old style.
• 156. Portrait of Commodore Bainbridge. By G. Parker, after J. W. Jarvis. About 1834.
• 157. Portrait of Amy Cranstoun. By G. Parker, after C. Ingham. About 1834.
• 158. Desdemona. By H. Robinson, after Hayter. 1836.
• 159. Portrait of Prof. Faraday. By C. H. Jeens, from a photograph.

9. Soft-ground Etching

Soft-ground etching aims to produce the effect of pencil (or crayon) drawings. Ordinary etching ground, made soft by melting it together with its own weight in tallow, is spread upon a metal plate as usual. A sheet of thin paper having a grain or tooth is then laid upon the plate, and upon this the drawing is executed with a pencil (or crayon), like an ordinary drawing. A hand rest must be used, however, so that the pencil (or crayon) only may touch the paper. Upon careful removal of the latter the ground is lifted off with it, wherever the pencil (or crayon) has touched it, in proportion to the pressure used. The plate is now bitten as usual. This process is said to have been invented by Dietrich Meyer (b. 1572, d. 1658).

• 160. A soft-ground plate, made as a first experiment by Jas. D. Smillie, N. A., with an impression from it.
• 161. The drawing made on the plate, No. 160.
• 162. The pencil used in making the drawing. No. 161.
• 163. The Frog and the Bull. By Louis Marvy (b. 1815, d. 1850), after Decamps.
• 164. Two Views. By Maxime Lalanne.
• 165. Old Windmills in Virginia. By James D. Smillie, N. A.

10. The Sand-manner.

The effect produced resembles that of soft-ground etching. An ordinary etching-ground is laid on a metal plate, and while it is still tacky it is powdered with sand or other suitable material, so that it adheres to the surface without sinking into the ground. Upon the plate thus prepared is spread the drawing to be reproduced, and its lines are gone over with hard styles, so as to crush the particles of sand through the ground. The plate is then etched. Invented by J. H. Tischbein, Jr., and described by him in a pamphlet published in 1790. An improvement, made by the inventor himself, is the substitution of powdered crystals of tartaric acid for the sand. The mordant dissolves this powder, and the biting proceeds more easily and uniformly.

• 166-168. Three Heads. By J. H. Tischbein, Jr.

11. Aquatinting.

This is also an etching process, originally devised to imitate India ink or sepia washes, The ground used is not, however, like ordinary etching ground, continuous, but perforated. There are two ways of laying the ground, the older or dry-ground method, and the later, or wet-ground method. To lay a dry-ground, powdered rosin, asphaltum, or other resinous substance is dusted on the plate in a powdering box (see No. 171). The plate is then gently heated so as to cause the grains of rosin, etc., to adhere to it, without allowing them to run together. The nature of the grain produced depends on the coarseness or fineness of the powder used. For the wet method, a solution of rosin in alcohol is flowed over the plate, and allowed to dry on it. In drying, the varnish formed is broken up into a crackle, which varies according to the density of the solution used. On a plate prepared by either of these methods, the mordant can only act in the minute channels which surround the particles of resinous substance, and the result is a network of depressions which hold the ink, the depth of the tint produced depending not only on the coarseness or fineness of the ground, but also upon the time of exposure to the mordant. Aquatint can be used alone, but it is generally found in combination with line etching. The invention of the process is ascribed to Jean Le Prince (b. 1734, d. 1781), although it has been claimed also for his friend, the Abbé de Saint-Non.

• 169. A dry-ground plate, “The Windmill,” by H. R. Blaney, with an impression. from it. Aquatint, combined with etched lines.
• 170. An etching scale, from a dry-ground plate. Three exposures of different duration on a fine ground and a coarse ground.
• 171. A powdering box. A quantity of powdered rosin, etc., having been introduced, the box is rapidly revolved. The coarser particles settle first, the finer later. If a coarse ground is wanted, the plate is laid on the shelf in the box, soon after it has come to rest; for a finer ground, a later moment of time is chosen.
• 172. A wet-ground plate, fine crackle, “Landscape,” by Jas D. Smillie, N. A., with an impression from it.
• 173. A wet-ground plate, coarse crackle, “Pansies,” by Jas D. Smillie, N. A., with an impression from it.
• 174. Virtue in the Pothouse. By Jean Le Prince. 1768. One of the inventor’s early attempts, quite primitive.
• 175. The Fishermen. By Jean Le Prince. 1771.
• 176. Figure Sketch. By Maria Cath. Prestel, after Adr. van der Venne. 1780.
• 177. Girl at her Toilet. — Mother and Child. By Angelica Kauffman. 1765.
• 178. Oliver Cromwell. By Henriquel Dupont, after Paul Delaroche. Probably the most important aquatint plate ever done.
• 179. Moonlight on the Androscoggin. By John Henry Hill.
• 180. Old Houses at Boulogne. By Jas. D. Smillie, N. A.

12. Mezzotinting

Mezzotinting reverses the order of most other kinds of engraving, inasmuch as it works from dark into light. This is why the French call it la manure noire. The English name expresses the fact that it renders half-tints in apparently unbroken masses. Before the artistic work of the mezzotinter begins, the plate is worked all over with a toothed instrument, called the rocker, by which operation its surface is broken up into innumerable minute cavities which hold the ink. This is called, rather inaptly, laying a mezzotint ground. The coarseness or fineness of the ground depends on the number of teeth to the inch of the rocker. An impression from the plate in the state in which the rocker leaves it, presents a uniform velvety blackness. By careful scraping with a steel scraper, gradations from black to white can be produced, the action of the scraper reducing the depth of the cavities, and at the same time broadening the ridges between them. Clear whites result from the complete erasure of the cravities and polishing the smooth places thus produced on the plate. Mezzotint is used pure, or in connection with etching, graver work, stippling, etc. The process was invented by Ludwig von Siegen, whose earliest published plate is dated 1642. Like all artistic processes, mezzotinting suffered from the striving after mere mechanical perfection. The desire to produce a ground so fine as to obliterate all traces of the tool, led to smokiness and vapidity. The present tendency is, to return to more vigorous methods. (See the specimen sheet. No. 144, Figs. 1 1/2-6, for the results produced by rockers of varying degrees of fineness.)

• 181. A mezzotinted plate, “Hollyhocks,” by Jas. D. Smillie, N. A., with an impression from it. The lines are put in with the dry-point.
• 182. Mezzotinting tools: — (a.) Rockers; (b.) scraper. Of the three rockers shown, the one in a handle has 40 teeth to the inch, the larger one without handle has 105, the smaller one 120 teeth to the inch. The small rockers are principally used for corrections, etc.
• 183. A set of progressive proofs, from a plate in pure mezzotint, “Sleep,” by Jas. D. Smillie, N. A., after Walter Shirlaw, N. A. The first impression is from the plate before any scraping was done on it.
• 184. Time clipping the Wings of Love. By James McArdel (.d. 1765), after Van Dyck. Pure mezzotint.
• 185-187. Studies in pure mezzotint. By J. M. W. Turner.
• 188. The Standard Bearer. Dated 1658. By Prince Rupert. To show the roughness of the ground in early work. Almost pure mezzotint, with some dry-point lines.
• 189. Frederic, Margrave, of Baden. By T. C. von Fürstenberg (d. 1675). To show the roughness of the ground in early work. Almost pure mezzotint, with some dry-point lines.
• 190. A Flowerpiece. Dated 1778. By Richard Earlom, after Jan van Huysum. Mezzotint with etching.
• 191. Little Devil’s Bridge. Fom Turner’s “Liber Studiorum.” Etching and mezzotint. The preparatory etching is shown in a photo-lithographic facsimile, with an impression from the mezzotinted plate.
• 192. Portrait of Wilhelm Eichens. Dated 1853. By Hermann Eichens. Shown in two states, from the preparatory etching, and from the mezzotinted plate.

13. Lavis. — Other means of producing tints.

Lavis, called also aquatint, a delicate kind of mezzotint, for which the ground is laid with very fine-toothed roulettes, is said to have been invented by P. F. Charpentier, in 1762. It was largely used by the French engravers for color-printing in the 18th century. Many other means are used by engravers and etchers for producing tints and grained textures. By simply corroding the plate with a mordant, acid tints are produced. A somewhat similar effect results from stoning, that is to say, roughening the surface of the plate by rubbing it with Scotch stone An irregular, accidental looking grain may be produced by crushing sandpaper through an etching ground here and there. A more even tint results if a sheet of sandpaper is laid on the ground and the plate is then pulled through the press. A rough, uneven grain may also be produced by partially removing the ground from the warmed plate by a dabber. All these operations must, of course, be followed by biting. The plate may also be roughened so as to give a tint in printing, by allowing sulphur to act upon it (sulphur tints). (See the specimen sheet, No. 144, for the results obtainable by roulettes of different kinds. See also the roulettes, No. 143.)

• 193. Four Pastoral Subjects. By J. B. Huët, Sr. 1789. Lavis and etching.
• 194. Birds. By Chas. A. Walker. The lines etched, the tint produced by rouletting.
• 195. The Building of Brooklyn Bridge. By J. M. Falconer. Pure roulette work.
• 196. Twilight in Arizona. By Thos. Moran, N. A. Etching and rouletting. The grain in the rocks, etc., sandpaper.
• 197. Twilight. By Mrs. M. N. Moran. Etching, rouletting, and stoning.
• 198. Marine. By M. F. H. De Haas, N. A. Etching. The tint in the water, sandpaper.
• 199. Mora Players. By F. Dielman, N. A. The texture in the wall, sandpaper.
• 200. Landscape Sketches. By Maxime Lalanne. Etching. Mottled tint in lower left-hand corner produced by removing the ground with the dabber.
• 201. Specimen sheet. Fig. 5, sandpapering; Fig. 8, acid tint; Fig. 9, stoning; Fig. 12, rouletting, to produce effect of mezzotinting. (The other figures illustrate the result of biting, etc.)

14. The Ruling Machine.

Ruling machines, by which parallel lines, either straight or wavy, can be drawn, generally on an etching ground, to be bitten in afterwards, are largely used in modern engraving for skies and backgrounds, or to produce flat or gradated tints. Another class of work in which the ruling machine has a large share, is seen in the cards used for menus, calendars, etc. The effect in these cards is produced by close ruling on the machine, and then etching with stopping out, or by washing with a brush charged by acid. If continuous lines are needed to define the design, they are etched in the usual way.

• 202. Pifferari. Etching by J. G. Chapman. 1852. Sky machine-ruled.
• 203. Moonrise at Sunset. Engraved by R. Hinshelwood, after M. F. H. De Haas. Clear part of the sky machine-ruled, mainly with one set of horizontal lines.
• 204. Crossing the Desert. Engraved by R. Hinshelwood, after M. Duvieux. Sky machine-ruled in two directions.
• 205. Morning on the Prairie. Engraved by R. Hinshelwood, after W. J. Hayes. Sky machine-ruled in three directions.
• 206. Edward Everett. Engraved by John Cheney, after R. M. Staigg. Machine-ruled tint, in which the lights are picked out, laid over the whole.
• 207. Menu cards. Published by J. A. Lowell & Co. Etchings in ruled tints, with some line work.

15. The Mixed Manner.

Combinations of various methods are found in many of the specimens shown. In modern engraving this way of working is largely utilized, and there are plates in which line etching, graver work, tippling, rouletting, mezzotinting, or sometimes aquatinting, and machine-ruling are all found together. Such plates are said to have been done in the mixed manner.

• 208. Portrait of C. L. Elliot. Engraved by F. Halpin, after Geo. A. Baker, N. A. Stippling, machine-ruling, line etching, and graver work.

16. The Printing of Intaglio Plates.

The printer is rarely given the credit due to him in the production of an engraved or etched plate, as the public finally sees it. He must be, not only a skilled mechanic, but a good part of an artist. Without a skilled printer, an etcher who is not his own printer could accomplish but little, and this holds good also of the engraver. The work of the printer is, however, most readily seen in the printing of etchings, more especially since the introduction of “retroussage,” an operation which consists in playing over the surface of the plate, after it has been wiped, with a soft rag, so as to spread the ink around and between the lines. The two impressions, No. 209, show the difference between a “clean wipe” and printing “with retroussage.” But the influence which a printer can exercise on the printing of an etching is still more markedly illustrated by Nos. 210-216. All these impressions are from the same plate, by the same printer, with the same ink, and on the same paper. They were printed in the establishment of Messrs. Kimmel & Voigt, of New York, by permission of the Cassell Publishing Company, from a plate owned by it.

• 209. Portrait of Murillo. Etched by Rajon, after Murillo. Two impressions, differently treated in printing.
• 210. Annisquam. Original etching by Stephen Parrish. Clear wiped, showing simply the lines on bare paper.
• 211. The same. Clean wiped, with retroussage, producing strong contrasts.
• 212. The same. Rag wiped, leaving a tint on the plate. Effect, softness.
• 213. The same. Rag wiped, with retroussage. Contrast, softened by the tint left on the plate.
• 214. The same. In the preceding proofs the tint left on the plate is flat. In this impression, delicately treated with the hand, a gradation has been wiped in the sky and on the water. Retroussage has also been applied.
• 215. The same. Treated like No. 214, but in addition the high lights in the middle ground have been wiped clean with the finger.
• 216. The same. Counterproof. Produced by laying a freshly printed impression on a clean sheet of paper, and pulling the two through the press together.

17. Steelfacing and Electrotyping.

Before the introduction of steelfacing by electricity, plates engraved on soft metal, like copper, gave very few good impressions. By the process named the face of the plate is protected by an infinitesimal coating of steel, and, with care on the part of the printer, and occasional renewal of the steelfacing, an almost unlimited number of good impressions can be printed from the same plate. By electricity, moreover, electrotypes can be made from intaglio plates, which, unless special obstacles interfere, differ in nothing from the original plates, and therefore give equally good impressions.

• 217. A Lady of Cairo. By Jas. D. Smillie, N. A., after F. A. Bridgman, N. A. Two impressions, one from the original plate, one from an electrotype.

18 A. Intaglio engraving applied to color-printing: — Printed at one printing from one plate.

The plate is painted, as it were, the different parts of it being charged with different colors. Most of the impressions thus obtained are, however, touched up by hand. First practiced in the 17th century. In the 18th century prints of this kind, from stipple plates, were quite popular.

• 218. Views on the Rhine. Etchings, published by Peter Schenk, Amsterdam. End of 1 7th century. The skies painted.
• 219. The Duke of York resigned by the Queen. Line engraving. 1795. By J. Fittler, after Opie.
• 220. Landscape. Aquatint. As the plate is rubbed in with only two colors, it shows the process clearly.
• 221. Un Minuet à l’Anglaise. Aquatint and stipple. 1800. By P. Roberts and J. C. Stadler, after Adam Buck. Retouched by hand.
• 222. Mlle. De Lavalière. Mezzotint. By G. Maile, after Goubaud. Retouched by hand.
• 223. Faith. Stipple. 1776. By Wm. Wynne Ryland, after Angelica Kauffman. The yellow in the chalice is added by hand.
• 224. A Young Girl. Stipple. By Ruotte, after Bartolozzi. Retouched by hand.
• 225. Epponina. Stipple. 1794. By Chas. Wilkin, after West. Slightly retouched by hand.
• 226. Cornelia. By Bartolozzi, after Angelica Kauffman. 1788. Shown in two impressions from the same plate, one printed in brown, the other in colors, slightly retouched by hand.

18 B. Intaglio engraving applied to color-printing: — Printed from several plates.

Printing from several intaglio plates, to produce one picture in proper colors by the combined impressions, was first practiced, so far as is known, by Jacob Christoph Le Blon (b. 1670, d. 1741). Le Blon proceeded on the idea that three plates, printed respectively in red, yellow, and blue, ought to produce all colors and black. In practice, however, he is said to have used a great many more plates. Later color-printers adopted the same plan, but added a plate printed in black to those in color. The process was much used in the 18th century.

• 227. Cupids. Crayon manner, printed from two plates. By Gilles Demarteau, after Boucher.
• 228. Study. Crayon manner, printed from three plates. 1786. By G. A. Demarteau.
• 229. Head of a Young Girl. Crayon manner, printed from four plates. 1767. By Bonnet, after Boucher.
• 230. The Rescued Rooster. Crayon manner, printed from three plates. After J. B. Huët. Bonnet direxit.
• 231. Woman at the Clavichord. Crayon manner, printed from two plates. By Ploos van Amstel (b. 1726, d. 1798), after G. Dow.
• 232. Vertumnus and Pomona. Crayon manner, printed from six plates.
• 233. Battlepiece. Mezzotint, printed from two plates. By C. Rugendas (b. 1708, d. 1781), after G. P. Rugendas.
• 234. Shells. Mezzotint, printed from four plates. 1754. By Jacques Fabien Gautier d’Agoty.
• 235. Frederic the Great. Mezzotint, printed from four plates. By Edouard Gautier d’Agoty (b. 1745, d. 1784).
• 236. Paul and Virginia. Lavis, printed from four plates. By Chs. M. Descourtis (b. 1753), after Schall.
• 237. Environs of Rome. Lavis, printed from four plates. By Chs. M. Descourtis, after De Machy.
• 238. Dutch Courtyard. Lavis, printed from three plates. By François Janinet (b. 1752, d. 1813), after A. van Ostade.
• 239. Mademoiselle du T… Lavis, printed from four plates. By François Janinet, after Le Moine.
• 240. Michel Lepelletier. Lavis, printed from four plates. By P. M. Alix (b. 1752, d. 1819), after Garnerey.
• 241. Jean Hennuyer. Lavis, printed from four plates. 1788. By Ridé, after Sargent.
• 242. House of Mrs. Garrick. Etching and lavis, printed from four plates. By Laurent Guyot (b. 1756), after W. Watts.
• 243. Ofterly House and Park. Etching and lavis, printed from four plates. By Laurent Guyot, after W. Watts.
• 244. Trying on the New Dress. Dry-point with tints, printed from five or six plates. By Miss Mary Cassatt.

18 C. Color-printing from intaglio plates and relief blocks combined.

• 245. Fridericus Imperator. One etched plate, one relief block. 1557.
• 246. From A. Bloemaert’s Drawing Book. One etched plate, one relief block. By F. Bloemaert (b. about 1600).
• 247. The Virgin with Saints. One etched plate, two relief blocks. By the Comte de Caylus (b. 1692, d. 1765) and N. Le Sueur (b. 1690, d. 1764), after P. de Pietri.
• 248. The Emperor Henry IV. kneeling before the Pope. One etched plate, two relief blocks. By the Comte de Caylus and N. Le Sueur.
• 249. The Holy Family. Baxter print. After Murillo.
• 250. Lugano. Baxter print. 1836. After G. Barnard.
• 251. Destruction of Sodom. Baxter print. 1836. After G. Jones.

III. Planographic Processes.

The planographic processes depend, as has been pointed out before (see p. 1), on the chemical and physical properties of the materials employed. Those here to be considered make use of two kinds of printing surfaces: stone and zinc. We have, therefore, lithography (lithos, stone) and zincography. Other materials, natural and artificial, have been tried, but are not practically in use. The chemical processes involved are not, as yet, fully understood, but the following theory is the most generally accepted. Lithographic stone consists principally of carbonate of lime. If lime and fatty acids are brought together, an insoluble soap is formed. The drawings to be reproduced are therefore executed on the stone with crayon or ink containing soap, and the surface of the stone is then treated with a weak solution of acid. The acid decomposes both the carbonate of lime and the soap, and the lime and the fatty acid thus set free combine to form an insoluble soap. The stone is furthermore treated with a solution of gum arabic. Its surface now consists in the parts drawn upon of an insoluble lime soap, and in the parts not drawn upon of carbonate of lime acted upon by the gum. If a stone so prepared is gone over with a wet sponge, the parts drawn upon reject the water, whereas the others accept it, and again, if a stone so moistened is rolled up in printing ink, only the parts drawn upon accept it, whereas the other parts reject it. The result in zincography is the same, but the chemicals used in treating the surface of the plate after the drawing has been completed are different. It is evident from what has been said that the planographic processes represent a new and very marked step in the progress towards reproductive methods which reduce the amount of human labor. Another specially noteworthy feature is their great versatility. Lithography was invented by Aloys Senefelder in 1798. The use of metals, including zinc, was also essayed by him, but the practical introduction of zincography is of later date.

• 252. A lithographic stone, with a drawing upon it, and an impression from it.
• 253. A zinc plate, with a drawing upon it, and an impression from it.

I. Crayon Drawing.

For crayon drawings stone is generally used, as zinc is inconveniently dark. The stone is grained, so as to give it a tooth, and the drawing is executed with crayons of different degrees of hardness, according to the character of the work, quite the same as on paper. Much original work of this kind has been done by artists of celebrity, especially in France.

• 254. Lithographic crayons, one of them sharpened and in holder.
• 255. Medea. Crayon drawing, by Emile Lasalle, after Delacroix.

2. Pen-and-ink and brush work.

Stones as well as zinc are used for drawing on them with the pen, in lines or in stipple. For this purpose the stones are polished, while the zinc is given a very fine grain. The ink is prepared in solid form, and for use is rubbed in a saucer with water, like India ink. The pens are drawing pens of varying degrees of fineness. Brushes are preferred to pens by many lithographers.

• 256. Lithographic ink.
• 257. Charles V. at the Taking of Tunis. Pen-and-ink drawing by P. J. N. Geiger.
• 258. Design in Commemoration of Schadow’s Birth. Brush drawing by Adolf Menzel.

3. Engraving.

If a stone is prepared with gum and acid before any drawing has been made on it, and it is then moistened, its whole surface will refuse to take printing ink, but if the surface is scratched, so as to remove the preparation, the scratches will take the ink. Therefore, if, on a stone prepared as above, a drawing is cut in with gravers, steel points, or a diamond, it can be printed from. The purpose of engraving in this case is not to produce deep lines, but merely to remove the preparation.

• 259. Illustration from Judd’s “Margaret.” Engraved by Konrad Huber, after Darley.

4. Etching.

A stone or a zinc plate is prepared as for engraving, and an etching ground is laid on it. The design is drawn through the ground with points, and the preparation is bitten away with a mordant where it has been laid bare. Aquatinting can be done in the same way.

• 260. The House in which Senefelder was born. Etching on stone.

5. Rub-tints, lavis, stumping, etc.

Quite a number of devices have been invented to produce effects resembling mezzotinting, washes, etc. If a grained stone or plate is rubbed in with solid lithographic ink of the proper consistency, and is then scraped like a copper plate on which a mezzotint ground has been laid, an effect similar to mezzotint is produced. These “rub-tints” are largely used in chromolithography. The stump and washes laid on with a brush have also been employed.

• 261. Christ among the Doctors. Original lithograph, scraped by Adolf Menzel.

6. Spattering.

A brush is charged with lithographic ink and a knife is drawn across the bristles, so as to cause the ink to spatter. In this way grained tints can be produced which may be localized by partly covering the stone or plate. These tints are gone over afterwards with the point, to cut up the larger spatters, or with the pen to fill up. Similar results are produced by the instrument known as the air-brush.

• 262. The Madonna. Spatter lithograph from Senefelder’s original treatise on lithography, German edition.

7. Autography.

A drawing in lithographic ink is executed on paper covered with a glutinous preparation. For crayon drawings, the paper must have a grain. If a drawing on such paper is placed, face downward, on a clean stone or zinc plate, then pulled through the press, and the paper wet from the back, the glutinous preparation will soften, so that the paper can be removed, leaving the drawing on the stone or plate as if it had been drawn on it.

• 263. Minerva. Autographic drawing in crayon by Jacob. From Senefelder’s original treatise on lithography, French edition.
• 264. Cat. Autographic drawing on mechanically grained paper, by T. Heywood.

8. Transferring.

Upon the autographic process is based the process of transferring, which is to lithography and zincography what electrotyping is to wood-engraving. From a drawing made on stone or zinc an impression is taken on a piece of prepared paper (transfer paper), in a fatty ink (transfer ink), and this is transferred to another stone or zinc plate, as described under “Autography.” There is, of course, no limit to the number of transfers that can be made, and therefore the number of impressions to be gotten from a single lithographic drawing is practically unlimited. The best transfers, however, result from firm, well-defined work, whereas those from fine crayon drawings are unsatisfactory. Impressions from wood-cuts, line-engravings, etc., can also be transferred, and can thus be transformed into lithographs.

• 265. Original drawing on zinc.
• 266. An impression on transfer paper, ready for transferring.
• 267. A zinc plate with the transfer from No. 265.
• 268. The transfer sheet, after the transfer has been made.
• 269. Impressions from original and transfer.

9. Presses and Printing.

The hand-presses on which wood-engravings are printed are platten presses, that is to say, the pressure on the block is exercised by a flat platten (see No. 34). The hand-presses for intaglio plates are roller presses, so called because the plate to be printed passes between rollers (see No. 76). The lithographic hand-presses are scaper presses, the pressure on the stone or plate being exercised by a flat piece of wood which is stadonary, while the stone passes under it. In planographic steampresses the pressure is produced by cylinders, as in the steampresses used for printing type or relief blocks; but in addition to the inking apparatus, they are provided with a moistening apparatus, as the stone or plate must be kept moist to prevent the ink from taking on the parts not drawn upon. At the hand-press, the moistening is attended to by the printer.

• 270. A Lithographers’ Shop. A hand-press, with a printer at work, is seen to the right. A slight indication of a steampress is given in the background. The man to the left is graining stones, by rubbing two of them together, with sand between them. To the right of him is a lithographic draftsman, drawing on a stone. In the right foreground stands an “etching trough,” with a stone upon it ready to be “etched,” that is to say, treated with acid and gum. The vessel near it contains the mixture to be used, and on it lies the “etching brush” with which it is spread over the stone.

10. The planographic processes applied to color- printing.

Of all the many reproductive processes, none have proved so serviceable for color-printing as lithography and zincography. This is due to comparative cheapness and rapidity, to the advantages offered by transferring, and to the versatility of these processes, which can inter-mingle flat tints, gradated tints, lines, and dots, if need be, on the same stone or plate. Without them, therefore, the vast development of color-printing, which has done so much to increase educational facilities and artistic enjoyment among the people at large, would have been quite impossible. The earliest chromo-lithographers proceeded on the three-color theory, according to which a completely colored picture ought to result from printings in red, yellow, and blue superimposed. But for elaborate work from ten to fifty printings are used.

• 271. Study by Raphael. Two printings, black and one tint. By J. Pilizotti.
• 272. The three-color theory, exemplified by a lithograph printed in yellow, red, and blue, with a black stone for the drawing.
• 273. Christmas Cards, executed in pen-and-ink; 13 to 19 printings. — Published by L. Prang & Co.
• 274. Imitations of Water-colors, executed in crayon, rub-tints, etc,: — (a.) “Morning in Venice,” after Ross Turner; 13 printings. — (b.) “A Misty Morning,” after L. K. Harlow; 16 printings. — (c.) “Oasis of Filiach, Algiers,” after R. Swain Gifford; 24 printings. — Published by L. Prang & Co.
• 275. Imitation of an oil painting, executed in crayon, rub-tints, etc.: — “Madonna and Child,” after Cignani; 25 printings. — Published by L. Prang & Co.

B. Substitute Processes.

The tendency to reduce the manual labor of engraving, which was apparent already in some of the older processes (etching and lithography), is carried as far as it is possible without the aid of photography in the processes grouped together in this division. They differ from the older processes, moreover, in this, that they are, with isolated exceptions, the outcome of the industrial rather than of the artistic development of modern times. It is not their purpose to supply the artist with new means of expressing his individuality. They strive to imitate something more costly in a way capable of rapid and extensive utilization in large industrial establishments. Cheapness is with them the first consideration, with as much artistic perfection as this limitation will allow. The first essays of note in this direction were made about the beginning of the 19th century, and the growth of the substitute processes kept pace with the growth of industrialism, until most of them were superseded by the photo-mechanical processes. With these latter they have one feature in common, — the hideousness of their nomenclature. The older processes had, indeed, been saddled already with high-sounding names, such as chalcography, xylography, siderography, etc , but the evil increased with the striving of every inventor or improver to advertise himself by attaching his name to his products, or, still worse, to impress upon the public the importance of his invention or improvement by barbaric agglomerations of Greek or Latin words, to designate something which Greeks or Romans never could have thought of. The matter is not mended by the fact that sometimes the same name has been applied to processes totally different from one another. The specimens here shown do not represent all the processes of this kind known, but the grouping adopted for those illustrated will give a fair idea of the various methods adopted to reach the desired end. The most regrettable lack is that of specimens of the methods based upon the use of mercury, such as those practiced by Dulos in the first half of the century.

I. Relief-etching. A.

The simplest method of producing blocks printable in the type-press without engraving by hand is to etch the lines and dots composing the design into relief. Senefelder tried to practice relief-etching before he discovered lithography, and Blake produced his “Prophetic Books,” etc., by the same process. It is hardly necessary to say that it is the older etching process reversed. In this the lines are bitten into the plate, in relief-etching the metal around them is bitten away. In the older processes of the kind under consideration the design was drawn on the plate with an ink capable of resisting acid, in the later it is drawn on paper and then transferred, as in autography. Gillot, of Paris, who took out a patent in 1850, was the first commercially successful operator, as he overcame the difficulties of etching more skilfully than his predecessors, laying, in fact, the foundation for the methods of etching at present practiced in the photo-mechanical processes (see p. 54). He called his process paniconography (pan, all, eikon, image, graphein, to grave), but it is more generally known as gillotage. Various other names have been invented for relief-etching, the best of them being typographic etching, as the blocks produced are really etchings destined to be printed in the type press.

• 276. Drawn on the plate. Dembours of Metz, 1835. “Ectypographie métallique” (ektypos, worked in relief). Two specimens.
• 277. Pen drawing on paper, transferred to the plate. Leitch.
• 278. Crayon in relief. Drawn on a grained zinc plate. C. Stahl.
• 279. Aquatint in relief. Shirley Hodson.

2. Relief-etching. B.

In this class are grouped together a number of processes which involve etching, but are more complicated than those under A. In some of these methods the parts not to be attacked by the mordant are gilt (chrysoglyphy, chrysos, gold, glyphein, to hollow out). For chemityping an intaglio etching is executed on a metal plate in the usual way, and the bitten lines are filled with an easily fusible alloy. The plate is then etched a second time, with a mordant which attacks it, but does not attack the alloy, and therefore leaves the lines standing in relief. In the Comte Process, a zinc plate is covered with a ground of gum arabic, mixed with zinc white and a yellow color (jaune d’Avignon). The design is executed with quill pens or ivory points, used like etching points, so that they lay bare the copper. The whole plate is now rolled up with ink, capable of resisting acid, and placed in a dish of water. The water dissolves the ground left on the plate, and the ink upon it floats off with it, while it remains on those parts which were bared. In a number of processes which may be included in this class, galvanic action is used instead of a mordant.

• 280. Chemityping. Two specimens.
• 281. Comte process. Drawn by Karl Bodmer.

3. Wax Processes.

A metal plate is covered with a wax ground, and the design is cut into it with suitable instruments, down to the plate, but without wounding it. The wax ground may be so prepared that the design can be photographed on it. The spaces between the lines are built up where necessary, generally with wax, — a very delicate operation requiring great skill, — and an electrotype is made, which can be printed from in the type press. Very good work has been done by these processes, and they are still largely used, more especially for maps, diagrams, machine drawings, etc.

• 282. Palmer’s Glyphography (glyphein, to hollow out). London, about 1844. Two specimens.
• 283. Xerography (Kerδs, wax.) London, 1861. Invented by Charles Hancock. Two specimens. The same name has been applied also to other processes.
• 284. Dawson’s “Typographic Etching.” Two specimens. A most unfortunate name, as no etching is involved.
• 285. Chandler & Jewett’s process. Two specimens.

4. Clay Surface Processes (“Kaolatype,” from kaoline, China clay).

A metal plate is coated with a composition of pipe clay, etc., and in this mass the drawing is cut with hook-shaped tools, down to the surface of the plate. A stereotype (metal cast) furnishes the printing block, to be used in the type press. The rapidity of these processes makes them useful for quick newspaper work of small dimensions.

• 286. A plate (Schraubstadter Star Engraving Plate), with a drawing cut into the coating.
• 287. Cutting tools used by kaolatypers.
• 288. Impressions from blocks cast from drawings on Star Engraving Plates.

5. Graphotype.

According to Knight’s Encyclopaedia, a zinc plate is covered with a thick coating of oxide of zinc. Upon this the drawing is executed with an ink consisting of a chloride of zinc and a menstruum. Where the ink comes in contact with the coating, the latter is hardened by the formation of oxychloride of zinc. The rest of the coating, between the lines, is removed by brushing and rubbing. In one form of the process, the adhering material is solidified by immersion in a solution of silicate of soda. The printing block is obtained by electrotyping. Invented by D. C. Hitchcock.

• 289. Graphotype. One specimen.

6. Galvanography, invented by Franz von Kobell, 1839.

The design is painted upon a metal plate, with colors which dry with a lustreless or granular surface, and are laid on thinly in the lights, and more thickly as the shadows increase in depth. Pen-and-ink and crayon drawings can be made in a similar way. Electrotyping furnishes an intaglio plate, which can be printed in the roller press.

• 290. Two specimens. By Franz von Kobell.

7. Blocks of Soft Mass.

In the wax and clay surface processes an easily worked mass is spread upon a support of metal, to which the cutting tool must descend. They are used only for the production of relief blocks. For the production of intaglio plates with a minimum of labor, and offering at the same time the desired facility of cutting lines of varying depth, another process has been invented to which has been given the name of stylography (stylos, a style). The same name has, however, been applied also to other processes. The blocks used are of a softish black composition, whitened on the surface, and the work is done with points and other tools specially devised for the pur- poser Electrotyping furnishes the plate. Although especially suitable for intaglio engraving, this process can be used also for the production of relief blocks.

• 291. Stylography. One specimen.

8. Stenochromy.

The blocks used in the stenochromic processes (stenos, narrow, close, chroma, color), may also be said to consist of a softish mass, but their purpose is the printing of many colors at one impression. The printing block is a mosaic of masses of dry, or nearly dry, oil-colors, cut to the shape of the spot of color which they are to reproduce, and fitted closely together. This block, whenever an impression is to be taken, is moistened with a fluid which softens the colors, so that a bibulous sheet pressed against it can absorb them. As only flat tints can be produced in this way, the picture is finished by impressions from one or two lithographic stones. Senefelder invented a similar process (mosaic printing), and J. Liepmann practiced and described another in the year 1842.

• 292. Stenochromic print. Unfinished. By Radde, of Hamburg.
• 293. Stenochromic print. Finished. By Radde, of Hamburg.

9. Machine-engraving.

Machines are largely used in modern engraving, but only as auxiliaries, for ruling straight or wavy lines (see Nos. 202-207). In machine engraving properly speaking, the machine does all the work. There are various kinds of these machines: — guilloche machines (supposed to have been invented by one Guillot) or lathes, which produce ornamental designs consisting of interlacing lines, circles, etc., such as are used on bank notes; medal-ruling machines, in which a point is made to travel over the medal or other low relief of which an engraving is wanted, while by an ingenious arrangement a second point, governed by the movements of the first, traces a series of lines, nearer together or farther apart, according to the variations of height in the original, upon a metal plate or a lithographic stone; and universal machines, which do all kinds of work. Most of these machines are so constructed besides that the design can be reduced or enlarged, or reversed. The first medal-ruling machine was built about 1830, by Achille Collas of Paris. A similar machine was constructed somewhat later in the U. S. by Joseph Saxton. All the machines so far named are for intaglio engraving. The Shanks machine, on the contrary, produces relief blocks of a simple kind. The engraving is done by cutting the lines into a slab of plaster of Paris, thus producing a matrix from which electrotypes can be made.

• 294. Universal engraving machine, built by Ferd. Lotz, of Offenbach.
• 295. Medal-ruling on metal. Done on a Collas machine.
• 296. Medal-ruling on metal. The portrait only is ruled.
• 297. Medal-ruling on stone, with reductions and enlargements, done on Lotz’s universal machine.
• 298. Relief machine-engraving, done on Shanks’s machine.

10. Nature-Printing.

In the processes so far described, the activity of the designer or of the engraver, or of both, is still a factor of importance. In those here to be considered the designer and the engraver are entirely eliminated, and the forces of nature are compelled to do all the work, although still without the aid of photography. In their application, however, these processes are quite limited, and their aims are scientific and not artistic. According to the objects to be represented, they may be divided into two classes: — mineralography and mineralotypy and nature-printing more especially so called. The representations of the texture of minerals, etc., included in the first division, are obtained by cutting the specimen in question to a plane surface, polishing it, and treating it with an acid, which attacks certain parts, but does not affect others. Electrotypes can be taken from the surfaces so prepared. If these are printed like intaglio plates, the impressions are called mineralographs, if like relief blocks, mineralotypes. In the process more particularly known as “nature-printing,” leaves, plants, etc., are pressed into soft metal, more fragile objects into a gutta-percha composition, and the impressions thus obtained are reproduced by electrotyping. If such electrotypes are inked in the impressed lines, the results resemble those obtained from intaglio plates, if they are inked on the surface, like a relief block, the designs show white on a colored ground.

• 299. Mineralographic impression. From an etched mineral.
• 300. Mineralographic impression. From an etched petrifaction.
• 301. Mineralotypic impression. From an etched mineral.
• 302. Nature-printing. A leaf. Intaglio printing.
• 303. Nature-printing. A plant. Intaglio printing in colors, produced at one impression, the plate charged with three colors.
• 304. Nature-printing. Laces. The plate inked on the surface and printed in the type press.

11. Gelatine Processes.

Since the properties of gelatine have been investigated in connection with the photo- mechanical processes, a number of methods have been devised for using gelatinous masses as printing surfaces without the intervention of photography. Several of these are described by Poitevin. A well-known device of this kind is the hectograph (hekatδn, hundred, graphein, to write, in allusion to the supposition that about one hundred copies can be printed by this contrivance), a gelatinous mass in a tin tray, to which letters or designs in writing ink are transferred from a sheet of paper. From the transfer thus obtained a number of impressions can be made on sheets of paper rubbed against it, and the transfer can then be washed off, leaving the gelatine in condition to receive new transfers. A process based on similar principles, for the reproduction of drawings in several colors at one impression, has recently been patented. The direct transfer process, by which transfers to stone can be obtained from designs in writing ink on paper, which have previously been transferred to prepared gelatine, also belongs to this category.

• 305. Gelatine print. From a drawing by H. Farny, executed in writing ink on paper, transferred to gelatine, and then printed from the gelatine.
• 306. Direct transfer process print, printed from stone.

12. Closson’s Process.

The latest of the processes properly belonging to this division is the one invented by the well-known wood-engraver and painter, Mr. Wm. B. Closson. As Mr. Closson has not yet made public the details of his invention, no description can be given here. The specimens exhibited show that it is capable of excellent results in the hands of an artist, both for intaglio and for relief printing.

• 307. Hawthorne’s Boathouse. Relief printing.
• 308. The Pines. Intaglio printing.
• 309. Portrait of an Old Woman. After Rembrandt. Intaglio printing.

C. Photographic Processes.

The photographic processes (phos, photos, light, graphein, to write, to grave) either depend entirely on the action of light for the making of the pictures which result from them, as well as for their reproduction, or they reproduce and multiply already existing pictures by the same means. Under certain conditions the colors of most substances are affected by light, which either darkens or bleaches them, thus showing that the substances themselves have undergone a change in their chemical constitution. If these changes can be localized and controlled at will, they offer a means of delineation, and this is what photography does. In a photographic picture, the lights and shades are due to the varying intensity of the light which has acted on a surface covered or impregnated with a substance sensitive to its influence, the action of the light having been stopped at the right moment, and the condition of the sensitized surface so changed that it has become indifferent to further action of the same kind. This done, the next desideratum, is to multiply the picture obtained.

Photography, offers, therefore, three principal problems: — (1.) To prepare a surface which shall be so delicately sensitive to the influence of light that an immeasurably short exposure will suffice to impress it; (2.) To make the resulting pictures permanent, at least in so far that the action of light shall have no further influence upon them; (3.) To devise means of multiplying the photographic picture without the necessity of repeated exposure before the object photographed.

That the first problem has been solved is shown by the achievements of instantaneous photography.

The demand for permanency not being wholly satisfied by the salts of silver still almost universally used in photography, the attempt has been made to substitute other metals, such as iron, gold, uranium, and platinum for silver, and of these platinum more especially is growing in favor on account of its beauty and permanency. Absolute permanency — so far as anything finite can be called permanent — is offered by enamel photography, which converts the images obtained in the camera into pictures on enamel, or on porcelain and glass, fired in the kiln, and therefore quite as indestructible as painted enamels. The bulkiness of these photographs, however, restricts their use to medallion portraits and the like. A solution capable of wider application is offered by pigment-printing (carbon-printing), which produces pictures on paper or any other material, consisting of finely divided carbon or other inert coloring matter, fixed to the substratum used by gelatine made insoluble by the action of light. A similar result is reached, although less satisfactorily, by the dusting or powdering processes, which proceed by rendering a sensitive surface tacky in parts, so that it will accept and hold powdered carbon, etc., in quantities proportional to the action of the light upon it.

The possibility, finally, of reproducing photographic pictures without a re-exposure before the object photographed, is given by the negative processes. It was one of the inconveniences of the daguerreotype, as it is of the ambrotype and the ferrotype, that each picture required a separate exposure, whereas by the use of a negative an almost unlimited number of positive copies can be made by sun-printing or printing by artificial light.

A fourth problem must be mentioned here with which science has already dealt with some measure of success, the problem namely of translating the colors of nature or of art into monochrome in accordance with their true values. The older photographic processes are very unsatisfactory in this respect, nearly all shades and hues of blue being rendered too light, and the reds, yellows, and greens too dark by them. This defect has been largely done away with by orthochromatic photography (orthos, right, chroma, color, called also isochromatic photography, from isos, equal).

The attempts to produce many-colored pictures corresponding in all their hues to the colors of nature, paintings, etc., by direct exposure of a single sensitive surface, have so far given results which are interesting scientifically only. They point to the highest achievement which photography can strive to attain. In a more indirect way the problem has been attacked by what has been called composite heliochromy (helios, the sun, chroma, color), based either upon the old theory that all colors are produced by red, yellow, and blue rays, either pure or mixed in different proportions, or on the more correct modern theory that there are three fundamental color-sensations which correspond to red, green, and bluish violet. Some of the results of these experiments are included in the present division, as well as in division D of this exhibition.

The specimens shown give a fair idea of the various methods and achievements of photography, and of the principal steps in its history. No attempt can be made, however, to enter into the theory of photography in this catalogue.

Ignoring isolated experiments without definite aim made by earlier investigators, it may be said that photography proper, that is to say, for the purpose of pictorial representation, began with the experiments on nitrate of silver published by Wedgwood and Davy in 1802. In the year 1813 Joseph Nicephore Niepce began his researches on the sensitiveness of resinous substances, which led to the production of the first intaglio plates by the aid of light. In 1819 Sir J. Herschel discovered the property of sodium hyposulphite to dissolve the silver chloride, which made it possible to fix the hitherto fugitive silver images. The year 1839 is of great importance in the history of photography, as Mungo Ponton then published his experiments with paper sensitized by bichromate of potash, and Arago reported to the French Academy on Daguerre’s process. In 1841 Talbot patented his “calotype process” (kalδs, beautiful), which introduced the use of paper negatives made in the camera, and on which he had worked since about 1834. The first negatives on glass coated with albumen were made by Niepce de St. Victor in 1847. The wet collodion process, suggested by Le Gray, was practically introduced by F. S. Archer in 1851. The latest great achievements in photography are the introduction of gelatine dry plates for negatives and of gelatine-bromide paper for printing.

I. Natural objects, etc., used as printing screens.

The first experiments in photography were made by exposing sensitized paper to sunlight under paintings on glass, leaves, the wings of insects, etc. The result was a negative, which in its turn could be placed on a sensitized sheet, to produce a positive. These earliest photographs were made with nitrate of silver, but they were fugitive, as the art of fixing them had not yet been discovered. The silver prints here shown are modern, made with silver chloride and fixed with sodium hyposulphite. The bichromate prints, also made by exposure under leaves and engravings, are believed to date back to the year of Mungo Ponton’s publication.

• 310. Five bichromate prints. By Prof. C. Enslen. Said to have been made in 1839.
• 311. Seven prints from natural objects, on silver chloride paper, negatives and positives. By Thomas Gaffield.

2. Daguerreotypes.

Executed on silvered copper plates sensitized with iodine, etc., developed with mercury, fixed with sodium hyposulphite, and toned with gold chloride.

• 312. Two portraits, made in New Bedford about 1842.
• 313. One of the first operations performed under ether. By Hawes, of Boston. 1846. The room shown is the old amphitheatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital, which was beneath the dome of the building. The attending physicians are Dr. John C, Warren, Dr. J. Mason Warren, Dr. Samuel Parkman, and Dr. Townsend.
• 314. Five portraits and a View of a church in Savannah, made in various parts of the United States up to about 1852. The coloring seen in some of these daguerreotypes is added by hand.

3. Negatives.

Negatives are printing screens in which the relations of light and shade are reversed. If a piece of sensitized paper is exposed to the light under such a negative, the result is a positive picture, in which the relations of light and shade are correct.

• 315. Paper negative, made from a print by direct contact, i. e., without the aid of the camera. The original print and a positive from the negative are also shown. By Thomas Gaffield.
• 316. Paper negative, made in the camera, according to Talbot’s calotype process, by Langenheim, in New York, about 1849, with a (recent) silver print on plain paper from it.
• 317. Waxed paper negative, made in the camera, according to Le Gray’s process, by Gen. Joseph Rowland, at Nice, in 1857, with a (recent) silver print from it.
• 318. Glass negative, wet collodion process, made in the camera, with a silver print from it, by H. G. Smith, Boston.
• 319. Glass negative, dry plate process, made in the camera, with a silver print from it, by the Notman Photographic Co., Boston. The face is stained red in the negative to cause it to print lighter.
• 320. Stripped negative on collodion film, made in the camera, with a silver print from it, by T. W. Smillie, Washington.
• 321. Celluloid film negative, made in the camera, by Miss Frances B. Johnson, of Washington, with a silver print from it. Subject: The Museum at Chalon-sur-Saône, which contains the Niepce Collection. The statue seen is that of Niepce.
• 322. Stripped negative on gelatine film, made from an engraving in the camera, by the Art Publishing Co., Boston. Negatives of this kind are used to make the printing films for collographic printing. (See Division D.)
• 323. Black and white negative on glass, made from a line drawing in the camera, by the Art Publishing Co., Boston. The preceding camera-made negatives show gradations from black to white through half tones. This negative shows clear lines (the pure glass) on a perfectly opaque black ground. This is the kind of negatives used for line work in the photo-mechanical processes. (See Division D.)
• 324. Artificial negative (so-called “etching on glass”), with a silver print from it. The glass is coated with a thin collodion film, sensitized, exposed, and developed as usual. The drawing is then executed on this film with hard points, so that each stroke removes the film and leaves the surface of the glass exposed, thus allowing the light to pass.

4. Positives on Glass.

• 325. Enlargement made in the camera, from a smaller collodion negative by W. H. Holmes.

5. Transfers of Positives.

• 326. Seven collodion positives transferred to paper. Made in Paris about 1860.
• 327. Two collodion positives transferred to enamel (not burned in). Made in Paris about 1860.
• 328. Gelatine bromide positive transferred to porcelain by means of Eastman’s transferotype paper.

6. Ambrotypes.

Ambrotypes are thin camera-made collodion negatives, on which the deposit is kept as light as possible, mounted on a black background, or japanned on the back.

• 329. Unbacked ambrotype.
• 330. Four backed ambrotypes, one of them from a lithograph. The tinting of the cheeks on the portraits is added by hand.

7. Ferrotypes.

Ferrotypes (melanotypes, tintypes) are ambrotypes made on sheets of japanned iron.

• 331. A sheet of iron used for ferrotypes.
• 332. Six portraits. The sheet with many portraits was made at one exposure in a camera with as many lenses. The tinting on the cheeks of the small portraits is added by hand.

8. Silver Prints.

• 333. On albumenized paper. Fifteen portraits and views, by the Notman Photographic Co., Boston.
• 334. On plain paper. Three reproductions of oil paintings, with silver prints for comparison, by C. G. Cox, New York.
• 335. On Whatman drawing paper, prepared with arrowroot, not toned. Eight views in Egypt, by Hamilton Emmons.
• 336. Gelatine bromide print. Portrait, by Augustus Marshall. Enlargement from a smaller negative.

9. Gold Prints.

• 337. View from Nature, by T. W. Smillie, Washington. Plain paper sensitized with ferric chloride, developed with gold chloride, washed with oxalic acid in solution.

10. Iron Prints.

• 338. Blue print, from an engraving. By the Soule Photograph Co., Boston.
• 339. Blue print, from the waxed paper negative, No. 317.
• 340. Ink picture. Printed under a positive (print). From Lietze’s “Heliographic Processes.”

11. Uranium Prints.

• 341. From an engraving, by T. C. Roach.

12. Platinum Prints.

• 342. Three portraits. By Augustus Marshall, Boston.
• 343. Eight portraits and groups. By the Notman Photographic Co., Boston.
• 344. Group. “Keeping House,” by the Obrig Camera Co.
• 345. From a painting, “The Mermaid,” by F. S. Church, N. A., by A. Z. Seibert, New York.

13. Permanent Photographs.

It has been stated already that enamel photographs and photographs on porcelain and on glass, which have been fired in a kiln, are practically indestructible. Without entering into particulars, it may be said that there are several kinds of enamel processes, known as substitution processes, and dusting or powdering processes, and that the pigment-printing process (see below), and the collographic process have likewise been used for the production of enamel pictures. The enamels here shown are the result of a substitution process involving the use of a salt of iridium. The dusting or powdering processes are used also to produce permanent pictures on paper. The principle on which they rest has been alluded to on a previous page (p. 40). Of much greater importance is the pigment- (or carbon-) printing process, which must be explained somewhat more in detail, as it enters largely into photo-mechanical process work. It may be outlined as follows: An inert pigment (for black carbon is used, whence “carbon-printing”) is mixed with gelatine, the mixture spread on paper, and allowed to dry. Paper so prepared is known as “carbon tissue.” For use, it is sensitized on a solution of bichromate of potash, and is again allowed to dry. It is then exposed to the light under a negative. The light penetrates the gelatine film, deeply where its action is strongest, less deeply where it is less strong, but always in proportion to the degree of action exercised by the light. As the light hardens the bichromatized gelatine, so that it will no longer dissolve in hot water, the result of the exposure is really the production of a very slight relief in the gelatine film, which is thickest where the action of the light was strongest and thinnest where it was weakest, with gradations of thickness between these two extremes corresponding to the gradations of light and shade in the original. The question now is how to get at this relief, which is embedded in the general mass of the carbon tissue, with its back upward. If the sheet as it stands after exposure were washed in warm water, the unchanged gelatine between the relief and the paper supporting it, would, indeed, be dissolved, but the thinner parts of the relief would float off with it. To prevent this, it is necessary to transfer the gelatine film to another sheet, to which it is fastened with the exposed surface. The washing away of the unchanged gelatine — the “developing” as it is called — can now be proceeded with without danger, until only the hardened gelatine relief, colored by the pigment mixed with it, is left on the sheet. It stands to reason that this relief produces all the gradations of the original, since in its thickest parts it allows no or very little light to pass, while in its thinner parts the white of the paper is seen through it in proportion to their thickness, until in the high lights there is so little left of the gelatine film that they appear of a clear white. If a reversed negative has been used in printing, the picture is correct as to right and left after it has been transferred. If, on the contrary, an ordinary, unreversed negative has been used, the result of the first transfer is a reversal of right and left. In that case it becomes necessary to do the developing on a temporary support, and after it has been completed to restore the picture to its correct position by a second transfer. As soon as the definite transfer has been made, the gelatine is hardened by chemical means, so as to make it insoluble. As the pictures produced by pigment-printing are composed of carbon or other inert coloring matter, it is evident that they must be quite as permanent as impressions in printer’s ink taken from engraved plates. Pigment-printing was first suggested by Poitevin in 1855, but it did not become practically useful until Swan elaborated the transfer process, as described in his patent of 1864.

• 346. Six enamel photographs. By Augustus Marshall, Boston.
• 347. Dusted picture. By F. Joubert. 1860.
• 348. Carbon tissue, i. e., paper coated with gelatine charged with pigments of different colors, used for pigment-printing.
• 349. Pigment- Print in two states, i. e., partly washed off or developed, and fully developed.
• 350. Five pigment-prints (carbon-photos) by A. Braun & Co., of Dornach.

14. Photomicrographs.

• 351. Group of Diatoms. By L. H. Loudy, New York.
• 352. Piece of a Section of Wood. By T. W. Smillie, Washington.

15. Enlargements.

• 352a. Piece of a Section of Wood. Enlargement of No. 352.
• 353. An Egyptian Statuette.

(See also Nos. 325 and 336.)

16. Microphotographs.

• 354. A Pigeon Post Film, such as were used during the siege of Paris for communication with the outside world.
• 355. The Lord’s Prayer, Views, etc., mounted in pendants. — Visitors, desiring to see these specimens of microscopic photography, will please ask the custodian to show them to them.

17. Instantaneous Photography.

• 356. Five photographs of vessels in motion. By T. W. Smillie, Washington.
• 356a. Two enlargements of instantaneous photographs of vessels (“Volunteer” and “Mayflower”) in motion. By David Mason Little, Boston.
• 357. Two photographs of lightning.

18. Orthochromatic Photography.

To properly translate a natural view, or a picture in colors, into monochrome, it is necessary that every color should be represented according to its correct value, i. e., of the degree of luminosity which it seems to have to the eye. Thus yellow, being a very bright color, must be represented nearly white, whereas a medium blue, being of low luminosity, must be of a correspondingly low shade of gray. In ordinary photography, however, as it was carried on previous to the discovery of the orthochromatic processes, the yellows, as well as the reds and greens, were reproduced altogether too dark, while the blues and even the violets were rendered far too light, the lighter blues often appearing as white. This is due to the fact that the chloride, iodide, and bromide of silver, which are used as the sensitive substances in photography, are much more powerfully acted upon by the violet and blue rays than by the green, yellow, and red rays. It has been shown, however, that these salts may be made more sensitive to the reds, yellows, and greens by treatment with certain organic substances which absorb the rays in question, and less sensitive to the blues and violets by the interposition between the sensitive plate and the object to be photographed of yellow screens, which subdue the effect of the blue and violet rays. The results reached are not absolutely correct, but the specimens here shown certainly prove that a great advance has been made towards the end aimed at. “For an exact representation in monochrome,” says Capt. Abney, in his “Treatise on Photography,” “perfect truth can only be attained when the curve of sensitiveness of the compound [used in the treatment of the sensitive plate] to the spectrum follows the curve of luminosity of the spectrum, and at present such a compound has not been, nor, if an opinion may be expressed, will it ever be, found, but an approximation may be made by an artifice.” The study of orthochromatic photography was first carried on systematically in Europe by Dr. H. W. Vogel, of Berlin, and in America by Mr. F. E. Ives, of Philadelphia, who was the first also to introduce it commercially.

• 358. Blue ribbon on a yellow ground, with photographs from it by the ordinary and by the orthochromatic method, by F. E. Ives. The negative for the orthochromatic photograph was made on a commercial orthochromatic plate, with a yellow screen back of the objective.
• 359. Chromolithograph, with photographs from it by the ordinary and by the orthochromatic method, by F. E. Ives. Same method as No. 358.
• 360. Two photographs from a painting, one by the ordinary, the other by the orthochromatic method, azaline process, by W. Kurtz. (See also Nos. 582 and 583 in Division D.)
• 361a-j. Ten photographs from paintings, by the orthochromatic method, azaline process, by W. Kurtz.

19. Colored photographs.

No specimens having been obtainable, the attempts to photograph the spectrum, paintings, etc., in their true colors at one exposure, cannot be illustrated here. The combination of color with photography, by pigments laid on by hand, is exemplified by some of the daguerreotypes, etc., in this exhibition. The Bonnaudtype, patented in 1879 and 1882, is based on a similar, but more intimate combination. Very excellent results have been obtained by Mr. F. E. Ives, by his process of composite heliochromy which comes as near solving the problem of photographing the colors of nature as any method yet devised, although by a process quite different from that involved in the experiments alluded to at the beginning of this paragraph. For the application of similar methods to printing, see Division D, Nos. 657-662.

• 362. Bonnaudtype. On a lightly printed photograph, used to give the general outline, the colors are laid in flat tints by hand, or they may be printed lithographically, in which case the lightly printed photograph can be dispensed with. The colors themselves are either mixed with albumen, or the paper is again albumenized over them, and sensitized as before. It is then exposed once more under the same negative, and the picture this time is fully printed. The photograph, therefore, is either developed in the layer of colors, or the colors are under the photograph.
• 363. Composite heliochromy. Two window transparencies of microscopic objects seen by polarized light. By F. E. Ives. Three negatives are made on one plate at one exposure, in a triple camera, through carefully adjusted selective color screens, cutting off respectively the three colors which correspond to the three fundamental color-sensations according to the Young-Helmholtz theory, viz.: red, green, and bluish violet. These negatives are primarily intended for projection on a screen, and if thus used, that is to say projected upon one another with red, green, and bluish violet light, again very carefully adjusted, the result is that they produce in the eye all the colors of nature. Views from nature (Yellowstone scenery, etc.) and from works of art have thus been made, which are very successful. The transparencies shown consist of three superposed gelatine films made with the negatives in question, but dyed — as they are to be seen by transmitted instead of reflected light — by the colors complementary to the three fundamental color-sensations, i. e., by yellow, blue, and purple. This is essentially the combination used also in the processes based on the old three primary-color theory, but the result is arrived at in a different way, and the hues, which differ somewhat from those of the so-called primary colors, are specially selected. The process, patented by Mr. Ives, has not yet been applied to printing in its present development.

D. The Photo-Mechanical Processes.

The demand for a process which can produce a multipliable picture without the intervention of either designer or engraver would seem to be met by photography, since from a negative made by the action of light a large number of positives, or “prints,” can be obtained by the same means. Photography has, however, several limitations which circumscribe its usefulness. In the first place, most of its productions are not free from the suspicion of lack of permanency. In the second place, the operation of multiplying copies from a negative, in spite of all improvements, is still too slow and too costly, and the cost increases in the same ratio as the promise of permanency. Finally photographs must be mounted, which is a fatal objection to them as book illustrations, and still more unfits them for newspaper work. What is wanted is a process which, from any scene in nature, or stationary or rapidly moving object, or work of art of any kind, will produce a block or plate, printable in ordinary printer’s ink, on an ordinary press, and at the same time absolutely reliable in the rendering of detail, of the general effect of light and shade, and of the relative value of the various colors involved.

The photo-mechanical processes — so called because, although based on photography, their final products are a result of the press, which is a mechanical contrivance — represent the nearest approach to the realization of this ideal yet devised, even if they do not wholly reach it. Aside from the uniformity of texture from which all these processes suffer, the chief difficulty in the way is that they still rely too much on human skill and human judgment. This is due, partly to photography itself, which yields negatives of different degrees of perfection and which, therefore, must be corrected, and partly to the operations which follow photography, such as etching, — the success of which depends entirely on the skill and the judgment of the etcher, — and retouching by the hands of the engraver, which nearly all blocks and plates have to undergo before they are ready for the press. The process of the future — or at least the ideal process which is kept steadily in view, although it may never be reached — will do away with all these disturbing elements, and will be as strictly a scientific operation as a demonstration in chemistry. But even conceding these limitations, it must be acknowledged that the results obtained by the photo-mechanical processes are wonderful, and that, by the reproduction and dissemination of the works of nature as well as of art, they have become a powerful and beneficent factor in the intellectual life of our time.

The technical aim, then, of the processes under consideration is the production of blocks and plates which shall practically be precisely the same as the blocks and plates produced by the old hand processes illustrated in division A of this exhibition. That the aim has been reached is conclusively shown by the photo-mechanical process blocks and plates here brought together: — a photo-mechanical relief-block, intaglio plate, or planographic printing surface, differs intrinsically, as far as fundamental technical principles are concerned, in nothing from the same kind of blocks, plates, and surfaces produced by hand. But to these latter the photo-mechanical processes have added several new varieties, which, although they may also be ranged under the different headings of relief, intaglio, and planographic surfaces, yet differ from the older processes in the nature of the printing forms used. These are: for relief blocks, the glue-type, made of hardened gelatine; for intaglio plates, the Woodburytype, the printing-form for which consists of a metal plate with shallow cavities into which a solution of gelatine colored with a pigment is poured, instead of printing-ink; and for planographic printing, the collographic processes, which use printing surfaces of gelatine, so treated that they will take the ink in certain parts, while they will reject it in others. Most of these results are illustrated in the exhibition, and will be spoken of more in detail in their proper places.

The photo-mechanical processes at present in successful operation are almost wholly based upon the properties of certain resinous and glutinous substances, and the changes which they may be made to undergo under the influence of light. These substances are: asphaltum, albumen, and gelatine.

If asphaltum is spread in a thin layer on any surface, and is then exposed to light for a sufficient length of time, it becomes insoluble in its usual solvents, such as turpentine or benzine. If, therefore, a metal plate is coated with asphaltum in solution, and, after it has dried, is exposed under a printing screen, either negative or positive, the parts under the clear portions of the screen, which transmit the light, will become insoluble, while those under the dense portions, which do not transmit the light, will remain soluble. If the plate is now washed with one of the solvents of asphaltum, those parts of it which have remained soluble will be removed, while the hardened parts will remain. It is self-evident that the plate in this condition may be etched, the asphaltum remaining on it serving as an etching ground, and that the result will be a relief block, if the black parts of the design were hardened (under a negative), or an intaglio plate, if the whites were hardened (under a positive).

Albumen, or white of egg, is soluble in cold water, even after it has been allowed to dry. If it is mixed with a solution of potassium bichromate, spread out on a surface, and then dried, it still remains soluble in cold water, so long as it is not exposed to light. On exposure to light, however, it loses its solubility. Albumen, therefore, mixed with potassium bichromate, acts like asphaltum, and may be used like it, with certain modifications in the manipulation.

The uses of gelatine are more complex. Gelatine, which is glue in a purified form, swells in cold and dissolves in hot water. On cooling it assumes the consistency of jelly, and finally dries out and hardens again. There are various qualities of gelatine, some harder, some softer, which show these properties in various degrees, and the kind of gelatine used is adapted to the work to be done. If gelatine is mixed with potassium bichromate, it retains its original qualities while wet, and even after drying, if kept in the dark. On exposure to light, however, it loses them, that is to say, it will no longer swell in cold or dissolve in hot water. From this change in the nature of the gelatine, various other results follow. For instance, gelatine in its normal state, if made to adhere to an unyielding surface and then swelled, assumes a reticulated grain, but it loses the faculty of reticulating in exact proportion to the degree of exposure to light which it has undergone. Again, the unchanged gelatine has no power of resistance to mordants, such as are used for etching, but, bichromatized and exposed to light, it acquires this power, in proportion to the degree of exposure. In a similar manner it may be rendered capable of accepting printing ink while in a moist state, the parts most hardened accepting the most of it, while those that have been protected from the light reject it. Finally, it becomes capable of resisting the impact of sharp bodies, like grains of sand in the sandblast, the degree of resistance again corresponding to the degree of exposure to the light. All these peculiarities have been made use of in the processes under consideration.

The chemical process involved in the action of light on asphaltum, and on albumen and gelatine mixed with a chromate seems to be one of oxidation, the asphaltum appropriating oxygen directly from the air, the glutinous substances being affected by the oxygen liberated by the reduction of chromic acid to chromic oxide which takes place when a chromate is exposed to the light in the presence of organic substances. Instead of potassium bichromate any other chromate may be used, the base of which does not precipitate gelatine. Ammonium bichromate is frequently substituted for the potassium salt, where greater sensitiveness to light is considered an offset to increased cost.

It has been said that the highest aim of the photo-mechanical processes is to convert a photograph from any natural scene, or from a painting, into a printable block or plate, without the intervention of designer or engraver. When the infinite variety of flat and gradated tints in such photographs, etc., is considered, and when it is furthermore borne in mind that flat tints of different value and gradated tints can be produced in the press only by means of lines or dots of varying size and placed at various distances from one another, the difficulties in the way will become apparent at once. It is easy enough to understand the reproduction of drawings in lines or dots by these processes, and even the rendering of flat and gradated tints by some of the photo-etching processes which imitate mezzotint or aquatint, does not offer special difficulties. But the matter assumes quite another aspect when it comes to making a relief block, to be printed in the type-press, from a photograph from nature, a painting, or a washed drawing. Technically considered, the photo-mechanical processes achieve their greatest triumph in the production of such blocks, and it must be said that their success is astonishing, even when looked at from a purely artistic point of view, in spite of the fact that the unavoidable uniformity of texture tells more unpleasantly here than in other processes, and that these so-called “half-tone” processes cannot render white, except by the aid of artifices outside of their proper sphere. It is self-evident that, in order to be able to produce a “half-tone block,” the flat and gradated tints must be broken up into corresponding masses of lines and dots, but it would be impossible to enter into a detailed description of the various means proposed for the accomplishment of this end. All that can be said is that the method almost universally employed to-day, involves the interposition of a lined or grained screen between the sensitive plate and the photograph, painting, or drawing to be copied. Careful study of the technical exhibits which show the various stages in the making of such blocks will throw at least some light upon the subject. It may be said, however, that practice, in this case as in so many others, is ahead of theory, and that no thoroughly lucid and incontestable explanation of the phenomena involved has as yet been given.

As very many of the processes in daily operation for the production of relief blocks are etching processes, and as the tendency is growing to give them the preference, mainly for commercial reasons, the importance of the etcher deserves a word here. Etching is a difficult enough operation, even in the simple manner in which it is used by the painter-etcher, but this is as nothing compared to the difficulties of process-etching for relief work. The problem is, to etch the closest as well as the more open work to a sufficient depth to prevent the ink from filling up the spaces between the lines, and at the same time to leave each line with a solid foot, increasing in thickness downward, so that it may not break down under pressure. These necessities have developed a system of etching, — first practiced, so far as is known, by Gillot (see p. 33), — which involves an extraordinary amount of care and skill. It will not do, as in the case of ordinary etching, to bite, take a proof, and then, if need be, lay a rebiting ground merely on the surface and bite again. Not only the surface of the lines must be protected, but their sides as well, and this in corresponding progression as the biting progresses in depth. To this end the blocks are rolled up between the various stages of etching with a special kind of ink (“etching ink”) and powdered with resinous substances, commonly dragon’s blood, and these are melted on by heat, gradually allowing the resin to coat the sides downward, and then filling up the finer parts of the work, until at last only the largest whites are left exposed for a final etching. The delicacy of this work can readily be estimated by examining the blocks exhibited.

The nomenclature of the photo-mechanical processes, owing to the causes mentioned above (p. 32), is unfortunately in a most sorry state, so much so that the congress of photographers not long ago held in Paris made an attempt at regulating it. It is to be feared, however, that, so far as the trade is concerned, this and a similar attempt made in Germany, will have no effect. Many of the names in vogue will be found mentioned in connection with the specimens shown.

The history of the photo-mechanical processes goes back to the year 1813, when Joseph Nicephore Niepce began his experiments with resinous substances. The year 1814 is usually named, but Niepce de Saint Victor, the nephew of J. N. Niepce, distinctly says 1813. A plate made by him in 1824, an impression from which is shown in this exhibition (see No. 391), is the oldest known piece of photo-mechanical process work still in existence. The publication of Mungo Ponton’s experiments with potassium bichromate, in 1839, may be looked upon as the starting point of the later processes involving the use of gelatine and bichromate. Many experiments were made to transform daguerreotypes into printable plates by etching, without, however, leading to practical results. The first experiments in photolithography were made by Dixon in America and Lewis in Ireland in 1841 and by Zurcher, of Paris, in 1842. In 1852 Lemercier, Lerebours, Barreswill and Davanne began to work their asphaltum process on stone, and a similar process, by Macpherson, was patented in England. In the same year Fox Talbot took out his first patent for producing intaglio plates, with bichromated gelatine as a “resist.” About the same time Niepce de St. Victor, Mante, Baldus, Nègre and others in Paris produced similar plates in France, using asphaltum. In 1854 Paul Pretsch patented his process, based on the reticulation of gelatine, and shortly afterwards established the “Photo-Galvanographic Co.” in London. In 1855 Poitevin, of Paris, took out a patent for a swell gelatine process for making intaglio and relief plates, and another for photolithography which he sold to Lemercier in 1857. In the year following another photolithographic process was patented by Cutting & Bradford, of Boston. All these processes, with several others, strove to produce half-tone on stone, but did not succeed sufficiently to be of practical value. The first really useful photolithographic process, distinctly limited to the reproduction of line-work, was that invented by J. W. Osborne, then of Melbourne, in 1859. A similar process was invented about the same time by Sir Henry James, of England.

The earliest extended commercial application of photography to the production of relief-blocks is said to have been made by Lefman, of Paris. The first conception of the collographic process and of the Woodburytype is claimed by Poitevin, but it was left to Tessié du Motay, of Paris, Husnik, of Vienna, Albert and Obernetter, of Munich, and Ernest Edwards, then of England, to make the former practically useful, while the latter came into notice only from the date of Woodbury’s patent, taken out in 1864.

Since that time the activity in this department of human research and invention has assumed such enormous dimensions that it is impossible to compress the facts into a small compass. The most important events of the intervening period were the invention, by F. E. Ives, of Philadelphia, of a process, introduced commercially in 1881, by which half-tone photographs, etc., were transformed into dots by mechanical means, and that of the Meisenbach process, patented in 1882, which was the first screen process successfully used on a large scale in the production of half-tone blocks.

Nearly all the important steps in the history of the photo-mechanical processes are illustrated in the present exhibition, thanks to the courtesy of the officers of the U.S. National Museum (Smithsonian Institution), by whose permission most of the early specimens here shown were brought on from Washington.

The order followed in the arrangement of this division of the exhibition differs from that of the other divisions. The technical illustrations — the means used in the various photo-mechanical processes — have been grouped together at the beginning, so far as they can be shown at all; and of the results, those attained by the intaglio processes are placed first, while the planographic processes occupy the second position, and the relief processes the third and last. This is in accordance with the historical development.

I. Technical Methods.

The following illustrations comprise only the leading processes, and more especially those at present in successful operation. Of intaglio processes (a.), the reproduction of simple line work by etching is shown (only by a plate, however), with two varieties of the method for the production of half-tone plates (from photographs, etc.), which involves the use of an aquatint ground, and which may, therefore, be conveniently named “photo-aquatint.” There are other methods, which employ swelled gelatine films for line work, and hardened wash-out films mixed with gritty substances, or films in which the reticulation of the gelatine is utilized, for half-tone work. The printing plate, in these cases, is obtained by moulding or electrotyping. Some of these will be briefly discussed in connection with the specimens illustrating them shown under “Results.” The Woodburytype is also illustrated under this heading. The planographic processes (b.) are represented by photolithography and by the several varieties of the collographic process. Photolithography (and photozincography, which is in reality the same thing) may be divided, as to the originals to be reproduced, into line processes and half-tone processes, and as to the technical method used, into direct processes and transfer processes. In the direct processes, the sensitive material is spread directly upon the stone or zinc plate, and these latter are exposed in the camera, or under a negative or positive, according to the special variety of the process. In the transfer processes, the image is first produced on paper, and from this it is transferred to stone or zinc. Only one of these many possibilities is illustrated here, by the “Osborne Process,” which is a line-transfer process. Some specimens of the photolithographic half-tone processes, early as well as late, will be found among the “Results.” In the collographic process, one of the greatest difficulties involved is the treatment of the glutinous film used as the printing surface, so as to enable it to stand a tolerably large edition. The early workers suffered from the tearing away of the films from their support. It was essayed, therefore, to attach them firmly to glass as well as to metal, and also to use them loose. Printing films of all these three varieties are shown here. The relief processes (c.) may again be classified, both as to originals to be reproduced, whether in lines or half-tone, and as to methods used. Of the latter there are three, — the etching process, the swell-gelatine, and the wash-out process, all of which are illustrated here in their application to line work. Of the various methods devised to reproduce half-tone, only two are shown, the relief-aquatint process (“mezzotype”) and a screen-process. The former is sufficiently outlined below. The chief point of interest in the screen processes is the production of a half-tone negative in which the flat tints and continuous gradations from black through grays to white of an ordinary photograph from nature or from a painting, etc., are transformed into masses of dots or lines, which shall be uniformly black, and yet reproduce the gradations of the original by difference in size and apparent difference in distance, although the distance from center to center is always the same. This negative once produced, it is in the choice of the operator to use either the etching, the swell-gelatine, or the wash-out process for the making of the relief block. Only one of the various screen processes devised is illustrated here. These varieties differ not only in the manner of using the screen, but also in the pattern of the latter, whether simply lined, or cross-lined, stippled, grained, etc. According to the character of the work to be done the screens may vary also in fineness, that is to say, in the number of lines, etc., to the inch. A third method of producing the needed negative by the intervention of mechanical means, is shown only in its results. See the original “Ives Process,” No. 703. The explanations given are again of the most elementary kind, their aim being simply to elucidate the broad principles underlying the various processes, without entering into minute details of manipulation. It will be well, however, to bear in mind that these details are of the first importance to the practical worker, as upon them depends the economical and sure application of the principles.

1. The materials used.

• 364. Asphaltum in the crude state. For use it is purified by washing with ether, and dissolved in benzole. The solution is stained black, to make it more easily visible on the plates in the thin layers in which it is applied.
• 365. Albumen. The shell of an egg is shown, as a reminder of the best known source of albumen.
• 366. Gelatine in sheets and in shreds.
• 367. Potassium bichromate.

2. The properties of gelatine.

As before stated (p. 51), the part played by asphaltum and albumen in the photo-mechanical processes is quite simple. The more complex action of gelatine is elucidated by the plaster moulds and the cast here shown. No. 368 is a mould made from a swelled gelatine relief. This relief was obtained by exposing a film of gelatine, of appreciable thickness, mixed with potassium bichromate, to the action of light under an ordinary negative made from nature. After exposure, the film was soaked in cold water, so as to cause the unaltered gelatine to swell. The result was a relief which was highest in those of its parts corresponding to the lights in the original, while the parts corresponding to the blacks were lowest, and the intermediate shades between white and black were represented by proportionately intermediate elevations. In the mould these relations must self-evidently be reversed, so that the parts representing the lights are lowest, while those representing the blacks are highest. The second mould, No. 369, is from a wash-out relief, obtained by the process employed in pigment-printing. In this case, the bichromatized gelatine film, which again was of appreciable thickness, having been exposed under a negative and then transferred to another support (see p. 45), was treated with hot water, which dissolved the unaltered gelatine, or in other words those parts of the film which had been protected from the action of the light by the negative, and which therefore corresponded to the lights of the original. It follows that, in the hardened wash-out relief thus obtained, the high lights must be represented by the lowest parts, while the highest parts correspond to the deepest blacks of the original. The cast, No. 369, made from the mould No. 368, is naturally an exact counterpart of the gelatine relief itself. For other moulds from swell-gelatine reliefs, see No. 373 c, from a half-tone, of very slight elevation, and No.. 383 e, from a relief in lines and dots, and very pronounced.

• 368. Plaster mould, from a swelled gelatine relief, with a silver print from the negative under which the film was exposed.
• 369. Plaster mould, made from a wash-out relief.
• 370. Plaster cast, made from the mould, No. 369.

(a.) Intaglio Processes.

3. Photogravure in lines.

The simplest way to make an intaglio plate, to be printed on the roller-press like a plate engraved by hand or etched, from an original in pure black lines, is to cover a metal plate with asphaltum or albumen mixed with a bichromate, and expose under a black and white positive. The parts of the coating under the clear spaces of the positive are hardened, those under the black lines, corresponding to the lines of the design, remain soluble. Washing the plate with a suitable solvent lays bare the metal under the lines, and the plate can then be etched, the hardened coating acting as a “resist” to the mordant. Its powers of resistance can be increased by rolling up in ink (“etching ink”) and powdering with some resinous substance, usually dragon’s blood.

• 371. Photogravure plate, copper, from a drawing in lines, made by P. H. Mandel, with an impression from it.

4. Photo-aquatint, for the production of half-tone intaglio plates from photographs from nature, paintings, etc.

A dry aquatint ground is laid on a metal plate, and over this is mounted a gelatine negative film, made by the pigment-printing process (see p. 45). To obtain this negative film reversed positive on glass has first to be made. The reason why this positive must be reversed will become clear when the nature of the manipulations in the pigment-printing process, which involve the turning of the film, are considered. The film mounted on the plate is a wash-out relief, thickest in those parts which are to show white in the impression from the plate, and gradually growing thinner towards the darkest parts, where it is thinnest. The relief character of such a film is well shown by the positive on glass, No. 372 c, which was also made by the pigment-printing process. The film acts as a “resist” to the mordant, allowing it to pass freely in the thinnest parts, and less and less freely as it increases in thickness. If, however, the film were mounted on the bare plate, and the biting then proceeded with, the result would be of no practical use, as the plate would present merely shallow hollows, incapable of holding the ink, and which would therefore be wiped out in the attempt to clean the surface of the plate. This is, however, prevented by the aquatint ground, which allows the mordant to circulate only in the channels around the resinous particles of which it consists, and thus produces a grain, precisely as in ordinary aquatinting. The mordant used is perchloride of iron, which is a “still mordant,” i. e., one which does not evolve bubbles of gas. An effervescent mordant cannot be used, as the bubbles rising under the film would tear it up. In biting, successive baths of varying strength are used. A strong solution of perchloride of iron penetrates only the thinner parts of the film, whereas a weaker acts also through the thicker parts. The biting, therefore, begins with a strong solution, which acts only in the darkest parts, and is followed up with weaker and weaker solutions, which continue the biting in the darks and at the same time carry it on gradually towards the lights. If necessary, the plate is worked over with the burnisher to brighten the lights, and with roulettes, etc., to strengthen the darks.

• 372. Photo-aquatint from a group from life. — (a.) The original negative from life. — (b.) Silver print from the negative. — (c.) The reversed positive on glass. — (d.) The bare copper plate. — (e.) The copper plate with the aquatint ground laid upon it. (The next step would be the copper plate with the aquatint ground on it, and the reversed negative gelatine relief mounted over it, ready for biting, but this stage is not shown.) — (f.) The finished plate. — (g.) A proof from the plate, “off the acid,” i. e., bitten only, without any retouching. — (h.) A proof from the plate partly gone over by the engraver. — (i.) A proof from the finished plate. The finishing is confined principally to clearing the lights by burnishing. — The N. Y. Photogravure Co., New York.

[Four photogravures made by this process are shown in the upper case. See also Nos. 472-485.]

5. Photo-aquatint (“Photogravure Gilbo”).

This process differs from the one previously described in the nature of the film used as a “resist,” and by the manner in which the gradations are obtained in biting. Whereas in the former process, the film is a hardened wash-out gelatine relief, mounted on the plate over an aquatint ground, by transferring from a temporary support, in the present case it is a swell-gelatine relief, formed on the plate itself, by exposure under a positive, and the aquatint ground is laid on top of the film. The mordant, again perchloride of iron (or nitrate of silver), as a matter of course, penetrates more readily through the unaltered gelatine, i. e., the swelled parts of the relief, the resistance increasing with the effect of the action of light, until, where the exposure has been longest and there is no swelling, it is practically complete. To obtain the lighter shades upon the plate, a film is formed on it with a fine aquatint ground, and the etching begun with weak solutions. The film is then removed and a proof taken. A second film is now formed on the plate, a somewhat coarser aquatint ground is laid over it, and the biting is repeated with stronger solutions, which leave the most delicate shades as they were obtained by the first biting, but increase the depth of the middle tints. The operation is repeated a third time, with a still coarser aquatint ground, and still stronger solutions, to give the final strengthening of the blacks. If necessary this sequence of operations may, of course, be continued until the effect desired has been reached. The plate is completed by burnishing, rouletting, etc., as before.

• 373. Photo-aquatint from a portrait from life. — (a.) The original negative from life. — (b.) Silver print from the negative. — (c.) The positive made from (a), under which the films on the plate were exposed. — (d.) A gelatine film on a copper plate, to be used as the resist, but without the aquatint ground laid on top of it. (To be able to show this film it had to be washed out to remove the unaltered bichromate, as otherwise it could not have been exposed to light, without hardening uniformly throughout. In the ordinary course of operations, when the plate goes into the bath for biting immediately after exposure, this washing is dispensed with.) — (e.) A plaster mould, taken from the film (d), to show that, in its swelled condition, it actually is a most delicate relief. — (f.) The finished plate. — (g.) A proof after the first biting. — (h.) A proof after the second biting. — (i.) A proof after the third biting. — (h.) A proof from the finished plate. The plate has purposely been left without retouching of any kind whatsoever, beyond repairing the light spots which show in the etching proofs, and which are attributed to lack of contact between the positive and the plate during exposure. — A. W. Elson & Co., Boston.

[Four photogravures made by this process are shown in the upper case. See also Nos. 486-506.]

6. The Woodburytype, so named from the patentee, W. B. Woodbury.

A hardened wash-out gelatine relief, produced under a negative by the pigment-printing process, is pressed into soft metal under hydraulic pressure. The result is a mould, in which the parts corresponding to the darks of the original are lowest and the lights highest, with elevations between them, proportionate to the intervening gradations from black to white. This mould serves as the printing form. After having been oiled, it is filled with a warm solution of gelatine holding some pigment in suspension, and a piece of paper is pressed against it until the gelatine has “set,” i.e. solidified. Upon the removal of the paper, the gelatine adheres to it, forming a delicate relief, which is hardened by chemical means, so as to make the gelatine insoluble. In allusion to the relief-like character of the prints thus produced, the process has been called “photo-relief printing,” but the term is misleading, as “relief printing” carries with it an entirely different signification of long standing (printing from relief-blocks). The printing form or mould used is, moreover, undoubtedly an intaglio plate, i.e., the ink-carrying cavities are sunk into it. The Woodburytype gives very beautiful results, but unfortunately the prints are apt to become brittle, from drying out, and to chip off. This seems to be more especially the case in America, owing, no doubt, to climatic influences.

• 374. A Woodburytype, from a portrait from life. — (a.) A hardened gelatine relief film, from which the mould is made by pressing it into soft metal. (The film shown is, however, reversed as to right and left). — (b.) A printing mould made from a hardened gelatine relief. — (c.) An impression from the mould (b.) — Woodbury Permanent Photographic Printing Co., London.

[See the Woodburytype in the upper case, and also Nos. 513-521.]

(b.) Planographic Processes.

7. Photolithography (“Osborne’s Process”), applied to the reproduction of line work, from originals in purely black lines.

A sheet of paper coated with albumen and gelatine sensitized by a bichromate, is exposed to the light under a black and white negative. After exposure the sheet is coated over its whole surface with transfer ink. In this condition it is floated on hot water, to coagulate the albumen, and is then washed with hot water, for the purpose of developing the image. The hot water dissolves the unchanged gelatine on those parts of the sheet corresponding to the whites of the design, and with it removes also the ink with which it was covered, while the lines of hardened gelatine, which correspond to the black lines of the design, are left on the paper, and retain the ink. A transfer to stone or zinc can now be made in the usual manner.

• 375. Photolithograph from a drawing. — (a.) The original drawing. — (b.) The black and white negative made from the drawing. — (c.) Lithographic transfer paper, made by coating paper with albumen and gelatine, and sensitizing it with bichromate of potash. The upper, lighter-colored part represents the paper as it looks before exposure. It is hardly necessary to say that it is only an imitation, as the paper itself could not be exposed to light and yet kept in its original condition. The lower, darker part is a piece of transfer paper as actually prepared. It shows the color which the sheet assumes under exposure. After the exposure, and before the sheet is inked, the design appears on it in brown lines on a yellow ground. — (d.) The transfer sheet, after exposure, and inked, one-half of it developed. — (e.) The transfer sheet fully developed. — (f.) The stone with the transfer on it. — (g.) An impression from the stone. — The N. Y. Photogravure Co., New York.

[Four photolithographs made by this process are shown in the upper case. See also Nos. 538-549.]

8. Collographic processes.

A film of gelatine, mixed with a bichromate, is spread upon a glass plate, coated with a preliminary film consisting either of albumen, bichromated and exposed through the glass, or of a mixture of water glass (which is a soluble alkaline silicate) and albumen, or of waterglass and stale beer. The object of these preliminary films is to form a substratum closely adhering to the glass, to which, in its turn, the gelatine film can adhere. Or, instead of glass, a copperplate, slightly roughened, is used as a support for the gelatine film, in which case no preliminary coating is required. The bichromated gelatine film, whether on glass or on copper, is then exposed to the light under a reversed negative. Reversed negatives can be made either by stripping the collodion film from the glass, and turning and remounting it, or a mirror or prism may be placed before the objective, and a reversed image reflected into it. The negatives used for making the printing films in these processes are generally mounted on gelatine films (see No. 322), partly for the sake of convenience, as it is necessary to preserve them, so as to be able to renew the printing film in case of accident or of long editions, and partly because they give better contact. After exposure, the printing film is washed, so as to remove the unaltered bichromate, as otherwise the whole film would harden uniformly in all its parts on exposure to light. A film so treated consists of gelatine in its normal condition in those parts representing the lights of the picture, of hardened gelatine in those representing the blacks, and of proportionately more or less hardened gelatine in the gradations between white and black. It is, in fact, a swelled gelatine relief, or a film capable of being swelled into relief, in which, however, the relief is purposely kept as low as possible, so as not to interfere with the inking. If such a film is moistened, and then rolled up in ink, it accepts the latter in due proportion on the blacks and grays of the picture, and rejects it on the whites, like a lithographic stone, and the printing is, indeed, done on lithographic presses, both hand and steam, slightly altered. In a third modification of the process loose printing films of gelatine toughened by the admixture of alum are used, and the printing is done on platten presses, the moistened film being attached to temporary metal supports by atmospheric pressure. This form has, however, gone practically out of use.

• 376. Collographic process: Printing films on glass. From an oil painting. — (a.) The printing film, not rolled up. — (b.) The printing film rolled up in ink. — (c.) An impression from the film. — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.
• 377. Collographic process: Printing films on copper. Portrait from life. — (a.) The original negative from life. — (b.) Silver print from the negative. — (c.) Printing film, not rolled up. — (d.) Printing film, rolled up in ink. — (e.) Impression from the film. As an unreversed negative was used in making the printing film, the impression is reversed. — The N. Y. Photogravure Co., New York.
• 378. Collographic process: Loose printing films. — (a.) A printing film made under a negative from nature, rolled up in ink. — (b.) A printing film made under a negative from an engraving, rolled up in ink. — (c.) An impression from the film (b.). The lettering is printed separately from type. — The Heliotype Printing Co., Boston.

[Eight specimens of collographic printing, by the Art Publishing Co., the N. Y. Photogravure Co., and the Heliotype Printing Co., are shown in the upper cases. See also Nos. 580-662.]

(c.) Relief Processes.

9. The Etching Process

The Etching Process applied to the reproduction of drawings in lines of pure black. A zinc (or copper) plate is coated with asphaltum, or with albumen mixed with a bichromate, and exposed under a reversed black and white negative, made from the drawing to be reproduced. After exposure, it is washed with a suitable solvent, which removes the unchanged part of the coating, leaving the lines of the design upon the plate in hardened asphaltum or albumen. It is then etched into relief, as elsewhere explained, gone over with the graver and routed out where necessary, and mounted on a type-high wood block, like an electrotype.

• 379. Etched relief block from a drawing. — (a.) The drawing. — (b.) The reversed black and white negative from the drawing, reduced in size in the camera. — (c.) Print on a zinc plate in albumen. In the ordinary course of operations, the plate would be rolled up in ink, before development, and the design would appear on the plate in black lines. In this case the plate was not rolled up, so as to show the thin film of hardened albumen on it in which the design was formed by the action of light. — (d.) Print on a zinc plate in asphaltum, one half washed off or “developed.” — (e.) Print on a zinc plate, fully developed, ready for biting. (The prints in albumen and in asphaltum from the same negative are shown together, to illustrate the two methods of obtaining the “resist.”) — (f.) The plate after the first etching. — (g.) The plate finished and ready for printing. — (h.) An impression from the finished block. — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

10. The Etching process

The Etching process for relief work in lines, applied to quick newspaper work. The process is precisely the same as that described in the preceding paragraph, but the present exhibit illustrates the rapidity of which it is capable, and which makes it possible to give pictorial representations of the events of the previous day and evening, in the newspapers of next morning. As this involves night work, it is hardly necessary to say that the photographic part of the operations is done by electric light. The subject represented is the Yale-Harvard football match played at Springfield on Nov. 21, 1891. The drawing, based upon a small instantaneous photograph, was finished by evening, the negative was made by 10.30 P. M., and the block was ready for the printer by 12.30 A. M., Nov. 22. It appeared in the Boston “Morning Herald,” of Nov. 22, 1891.

• 380. Newspaper Work. — (a.) The drawing. — (b.) The reversed black and white negative. — (c.) The plate ready for printing. — (d.) A proof from the plate. — (e.) The papier maché matrix used for casting the stereotype from which the block was printed in the “Herald.” — (f.) An ordinary impression from the “Herald” of Nov. 22, 1891. — The Boston Engraving Co., Boston.

11. Photo-aquatint in relief

Photo-aquatint in relief (“Mezzotype”), for the reproduction of photographs from nature and other half-tone originals. This is simply the reversal of the photo-aquatint process as used for the production of intaglio plates. The “resist” is a gelatine film and the grain is secured by an aquatint ground, but a reversed negative is used instead of a positive, so that the whites are bitten away instead of the blacks.

• 381. Mezzotype. — The finished block with an impression from it. (The original was evidently an engraving, but in the reproduction the lines are broken up into a grain.) — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.
• 382. Mezzotype. — The finished block, with an impression from it. (The original was a line engraving, which was reproduced as such, except in the face, where the aquatint ground was utilized, as the print, from which the block had to be made, was weak in these parts.) — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

12. The Swell-Gelatine Process

The Swell-Gelatine Process, applied to the reproduction of line work. A bichromatized gelatine film is laid on a glass plate, and exposed under a black and white negative. After exposure, the film is soaked in water, which causes the lines that were protected by the black portions of the negative, and which correspond to the whites of the design, to swell up, while those lines which were not protected, and which correspond to the blacks, do not swell. The film in this condition represents a mould or matrix, and a cast taken from it could be used in the printing press, if the material of which it is made were sufficiently hard. As this is not the case, however, another matrix has to be made from the first cast, and from this second matrix a stereotype is cast, which is finished with the graver and routed where necessary, and mounted type-high on a wood-block. The difficulty in the swell-gelatine process, to be overcome only by great skill and experience, is the production of lines which are neither rounded nor concave, but perfectly flat on the surface.

• 383. Swell-gelatine relief block, from a drawing. — (a.) A drawing made upon a photograph, in imitation of an engraving, and the photograph then bleached out. — (b.) Black and white negative made from the drawing. — (c.) Plaster cast from the swelled gelatine film made under the negative. The film itself is not shown. In the practical working of the process, this first cast is not made in plaster, but in a soft mass which every operator holds secret, although several recipes have been published. — (d.) Stereotype made from a matrix obtained from the cast (c.). — (e.) The stereotype, routed and trimmed with the graver and mounted on the block, ready for printing. — (f.) Impression from the rough stereotype (d.). — (g.) Impression from the finished block. — The Moss Engraving Co., New York.
• [Four impressions from blocks made by this process are shown in the upper case. See also Nos. 673, 674, 688 and 689.]

13. The Wash-Out Process

The Wash-Out Process, applied to the reproduction of line work. A thick film of bichromated gelatine is formed on a plate of glass. This film, after it has set, is transferred and cemented to a zinc plate, with the side that was next to the glass upwards. It is then exposed under a reversed black and white negative. The exposure hardens the gelatine film under the clear spaces of the negative, which represent the black lines of the original, but leaves it soluble under the dense parts, which represent the whites. The film is now treated with warm water so as to wash away the unchanged gelatine between the hardened lines, leaving the latter standing in relief. As soon as sufficient depth has been obtained, the washing away, or “development,” is stopped. A film of this kind can be printed from, and this is actually done in the “gluetype” process (see No. 704). Usually, however, a wax mould is made from the film, and from this an electrotype.

• 384. Wash-out relief block, made from a wood-engraving. — (a.) The wood-engraving used as the original. — (b.) Reversed black and white negative made from the wood-engraving, reduced in size. — (c.) The gelatine film formed on glass. (The film shown is simply gelatine, not mixed with bichromate.) — (d.) The film transferred to zinc, exposed, and washed out. — (e.) Another washed-out film, filled in with white, to bring out the design. — (f.) The electrotype made from the washed-out film. — (g.) Impression from the washed-out gelatine film. — (h.) Impression from the electrotype. — The N. Y. Engraving and Printing Co,, New York.

14. Screen processes for producing half-tone relief blocks.

As before stated, the main point of interest in these processes is the making of the black and white half-tone negative, in which the flat tints and gradations of the original, which an ordinary negative translates into flat and continuous gradated tints of black and gray, are transformed into masses of black dots of equal density, gradated in size and grouped, apparently, closer together or farther apart, although always equidistant from center to center, so that, seen at a distance, they shall merge in the eye into flat tints and gradations answering to those of the original. The difference between an ordinary half-tone negative and a process half-tone negative will be best understood, if the former is considered as a washed India ink drawing, and the latter as a stipple drawing made from it with pen and ink. To reach this result a wet collodion plate is used in the camera, and before it, at a slight distance from it, is placed a glass screen ruled with fine black lines, in the process here illustrated, lines crossing one another. The rays of light reflected by the picture or other object to be photographed pass through the clear spaces of the screen on their way to the sensitive plate, while all light is cut off by the black lines of the screen. It is evident that the image produced on the plate must consist of isolated dots. As, however, the light falling through the minute apertures of the screen varies in intensity according to the lights and shades of the original, one would expect to obtain a picture in black dots and dots of different shades of gray between crossing white lines, but all of the same size. This is not the case, however. Where the light acts with greater force, that is to say in the whites and lighter shades of the picture, it overcomes to a certain extent the effect of the black lines of the screen, so that the whites run together, and leave only parts of these lines visible as black dots on a white ground. In the darker parts of the picture, on the contrary, in proportion to the loss of intensity of the light reflected through the screen, the lines hold their own, and the gradations are formed by white dots on a black ground, until, in the blacks, there is no action whatever. In the development of the latent image on the plate care is taken, as a matter of course, to bring it out fully and to increase the density of the deposit as much as may be without filling up the finer parts. The great difficulty in these processes is, so far as the rendering the values of the original is concerned, that they cannot produce white, a limitation which is perhaps too much emphasized in the reproduction of a scale of tints here shown. This reproduction has, however, been purposely left as the camera and flat etching produced it. By stopping out and continuing the etching in the lighter tints, without protecting the sides of the lines or dots, a greater range of tones might have been secured, and pure white might have been obtained by cutting away the grain between and around the various compartments. These artifices are, indeed, employed in the practical operation of the process. It has been stated before, that, after the half-tone negative has been made, the block from it may be produced by either the etching, the swelling, or the wash-out process. All the blocks here shown were etched.

• 385. Half-tone relief block, from a scale of flat tints from black to white. — (a.) The original from which the negative was made. — (b.) The screen used in making the negative. Black lines crossing one another, 124 lines to the inch. — (c.) The half-tone negative. — (d.) The block made by means of the negative (c.), etched on zinc. — (e.) Impression from the block. — M. Wolfe, Dayton, O.
• 386. Half-tone relief block, made from a photograph from a painting. — (a.) The reversed half-tone negative. — (b.) The block. Etched on copper. — (c.) Impression from the block. — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.
• 387. Half-tone relief block, made from a portrait photograph from life. — (a.) The photograph (silver print). — (b.) The block. Etched on copper. — (c.) Impression from the block. — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.
• 388. Half-tone relief block, made from a lithograph. — (a.) The lithograph. — (b.) The block. Etched on copper. — (c.) Impression from the block. — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

15. The Relief Processes applied to Color-Printing.

The specimens shown illustrate the method of making prints in colors from half-tone originals, as well as from originals in line, by the processes described. For the print in colors, No. 389, the washed drawing which served as an original, was reproduced by screen process, and the color-blocks added are based essentially on the three-color theory, one having been printed in brown, which is dark yellow, and the other two in red and blue. The yellow frame does not enter into the color-scheme of the picture itself, being merely ornamental. In the making of the color blocks, the negative from the washed drawing served merely as a guide, or key, such parts of it being used for each block as the artist who directed the operations deemed advisable. Some of the blocks are in aquatint, etched into relief. No. 390 is a much simpler specimen, the reproduction of a drawing in lines, to which a tint has been added from an aquatint relief block.

• 389. Color-print from five blocks. — The original washed drawing, with the blocks, and a set of progressive proofs from them. The first impression is from the first block, the second from the second, the third from the first and second together, the fourth from the third block, the fifth from the first, second, and third together, and so on. — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.
• 390. Color-print from two blocks. — Only the proofs are shown, the first from the block reproducing the drawing, the second from the tint block, the third from both together. — The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

II. Results.

(a.) Intaglio Processes.

1. Joseph Nicephore Niepce

Joseph Nicephore Niepce, the earliest investigator of the effect exercised by light upon asphaltum, with a view to the production of intaglio plates. Niepce coated his plates with asphaltum dissolved in oil of lavender, and exposed them under positives, i.e., under the prints, etc., which he tried to reproduce, or in the camera, and used the same oil as a solvent to develop the image after exposure. The specimen here shown, made from a print placed in contact with the plate, is one of a limited number of impressions taken in 1864 from the oldest plate of this kind still in existence. It was made in 1824 and is now preserved in the museum at Chalon-sur-Saône. The metal is said to be tin. Niepce named his process “heliography.”

• 391. Cardinal d’Amboise. From an engraving by Isaac Briot.

2. Henry Fox Talbot

Henry Fox Talbot took out two patents in England, Oct. 29, 1852, and April 21, 1858, for making intaglio plates, involving the use of a bichromate with gelatine as the “resist,” and perchloride of platinum or of iron as the mordant. To give a grain to the plate, Talbot proposed a first exposure under woven fabrics or under a sheet of glass with opaque lines, to be followed by exposure under a positive, or the laying of a dry aquatint ground, either under or over the gelatine film. He also pointed out the use of baths of different strength in etching. The resulting prints he called “photoglyphs.” Nos. 392 and 393 are proofs given to J. W. Osborne by Talbot himself. No. 394 was published in the “Photographic News,” of Nov. 12, 1858. All three are from negatives directly from the buildings, etc., represented.

• 392. Statue of Charles IV., Prague.
• 393. Temple of Edfou, Egypt.
• 394. The Institute of France.

3. Paul Pretsch

Paul Pretsch was the first, so far as known, to make use of the grain resulting from the reticulation of bichromated gelatine adhering to an unyielding surface, when swelled by the absorption of water after exposure to light. According to his English patent of Nov. 9, 1854, he mixed the bichromated gelatine with a solution of silver nitrate and of potassium iodide, exposed under a print, etc., or a positive, and then developed the picture, i.e., brought it into relief, by washing with cold water or a solution of borax or of carbonate of soda. From this gelatine film a printing plate was obtained by galvanic action. Pretsch therefore called his process “photo-galvanography,” and the publishing company which he organized, the “Photo-Galvanographic Co.” All of the specimens here shown, except Nos. 396 and 400, are proofs given by Pretsch himself to J. W. Osborne, and several of them bear his signature.

• 395. Portrait of a Gentleman. From life. Apparently untouched by the graver.
• 396. Head of a Soldier. Fragment of a larger plate, “Crimean Heroes.” From a photograph from life. Worked over with the roulette.
• 397. Hatfield House. South front. From a photograph.
• 398. Hatfield House. East front. From a photograph. The sky aquatinted.
• 399. Richmond on Thames. From a photograph. The sky ruled. Published by the Photo-Galvanographic Co., 1857.
• 400. The Capture of Knight Kuenringer. From a drawing by J.P.N. Geiger. Published by the Photo-Galvanographic Co., 1857.

4. E. Baldus

E. Baldus is mentioned by Niepce de St. Victor, in his “Traité pratique de gravure heliographique sur acier et sur verre,” Paris: 1856, as using the asphaltum process, slightly modified, and etching his plates by means of electricity. The specimens shown are from Blanquart-Evrard’s “La Photographic,” Lille: 1869.

• 401. Force. From an engraving by Marcantonio.
• 402. Milon of Croton. From a marble group.

5. Alphonse Poitevin

Alphonse Poitevin, — who claimed, and for whom his friends claim, the invention or the first suggestion of nearly every photographic and photo-mechanical process now in use, and who certainly was quite prolific in ideas, although he developed but few of them to the stage of practical utility, — took out a French patent, on Aug. 27, 1855, for a swell-gelatine process, which he called “helioplastie.” The printing plate was obtained by moulding, casting, and electrotyping, or by electro-deposition directly on the film.

• 403. Reproduction of an engraving. Made about 1855, and published as historical evidence in his “Traité de l’impression photographique sans sels d’argent.” Paris: 1862. The page of the book opposite the engraving, shown in the exhibition, gives an account of this process.

6. Henri Garnier

Henri Garnier is credited with having worked several processes, one similar to the photo-aquatint process (see p. 60), the other involving the exposure of an iodized plate, amalgamating with mercury, rolling up in fatty ink, and etching. In 1867 he received the grand prize at the Exposition Universelle for his heliogravure of the “Chateau de Maintenon.” The two specimens shown are from Blanquart-Evrard’s “La Photographic,” Lille: 1869.

• 404. Reproduction of an old document.
• 405. Stereoscopic view. From a photograph.

7. F. Hanfstaengl, Munich.

• 406. Male portrait. From an oil painting by N. Maas.

8. E. Albert, Munich.

• 407. Rembrandt’s Wife. From an oil painting by Rembrandt.
• 408. Winter Landscape. From an oil painting by Sal. van Ruysdael.
• 409. Hutten fighting French Noblemen. From an oil painting by W. Lindenschmidt.
• 410. Landscape. From an oil painting by Paterson.

9. J. B. Obernetter, Munich.

According to C. C. Schirm, as reported in Vogel’s “Mittheilungen,” No. 367, p. 49, “Obernetter’s heliogravure process produces the necessary depressions in the plate by causing a layer of silver chloride to corrode it.” From this slight allusion, it is evident that Obernetter’s process differs from all other processes in general practice.

• 411. Landscape. From an orthochromatic negative (azaline process) from nature.
• 412. Dog and Kennel. From an instantaneous photograph.

10. K. K. Militair-geographisches Institut, Vienna.

• 413. Venus nourishing Cupids. From C. Galle’s engraving, after Rubens.
• 414. Bedouin Camp. From a drawing by L. C. Müller.
• 415. The Emperor Maximilian’s Bridal Procession. From a drawing by W. Koller.
• 416. At Cortina d’Ampezzo. From a watercolor by L. Pasini.
• 417. Christmas. From a drawing by G. Frank, after Waldmüller.
• 418. The Ford. From a pencil drawing by L. Richter.
• 419. Italian Landscape. From a charcoal drawing by L. Neubert.
• 420. St. Elizabeth. From a painting by Liezen-Mayer.
• 421. Madonna and Child with Two Saints. From Steinmüller’s engraving, after Luini.

11. R. Paulussen, Vienna.

• 422. Charlotte Wolter. From a bust by V. Tilgner.
• 423. Elizabeth Waldmüller. From an oil painting by Waldmüller.
• 424. Anna Waldmüller. From an oil painting by Waldmüller.
• 425. The Cycle of Life. From a painting by J. Canon.
• 426. Apollo and the Muses. From a painting by E. Charlemont.
• 427. Horses. From a charcoal study by Ad. Schreyer.

12. C. Klic, Vienna.

Photo-aquatints. Although the photo-aquatint process (see p. 60) dates back to Fox Talbot, the credit of having brought it to its present perfection is generally awarded to Klic, of Vienna. Such plates have, therefore, been called also “Klicotypes” (Klitschotypes).

• 428-432. The Five Senses. From paintings by Hans Makart.
• 433. Rock-Tomb at Pinara. From a photograph.
• 434. Triumphal Procession of Bacchus and Ariadne. From a relief by R. Weyr.

13. C. Haack, Vienna.

• 435. Portrait Study. From a drawing by Timoteo Viti.

14. J. Löwy, Vienna.

• 436. Portrait of F. Amerling. From an oil painting by himself.
• 437. Head of St. John. From an oil painting by R. von Wieser.

15. H. Riffarth, Berlin.

• 438. Evening on the Nile. From a painting by W. Gentz.
• 439. Meeting of Two Caravans. From a painting by W. Gentz.

16. Photographische Gesellschaft, Berlin.

• 440. Family Group. From an oil painting by Rembrandt.
• 441. The Alchymist. From an oil painting by D. Teniers, Jr.

17. Reichsdruckerei, Berlin.

• 442-444. Studies by Raphael. From drawings in pen and ink, sanguin, and chalk heightened with white.

18. G. Scamoni, St. Petersburg.

Scamoni’s process, “electroheliogravure,” as described by him in his “Handbuch der Heliographie,” St. Petersburg: 1872, was first conceived in 1861, and made practically available by about 1866. It can be used for the reproduction of line-work only, and is based upon the fact that collodion negatives, and consequently also collodion positives on glass show a perceptible relief. Such a positive from an engraving, made with a collodion of special quality, is so treated as to increase the relief of the lines as much as possible, and a plate is then made from it by electrodeposition. Considerable handwork is necessary to finish the plate.

• 445. Reproduction of a woodcut after L. Richter.
• 446. Reproduction of a line engraving.

19. Annan & Swan, Glasgow.

The specimens exhibited show considerable retouching by means of the roulette, etc.

• 447. Robert Fulton. From a painting by Sharples.
• 448. Washington’s Mother. From a painting by Middleton.

20. A. Dawson, London.

• 449, 450. Reproductions of drawings.

21. The Autotype Co., London.

• 451. Cinderella. “Autogravure” from a watercolor by G. G. Manton.

22. Typographic Etching Co., London.

• 452. The Nave, Westminster Abbey. From a painting by A. Dawson.

23. Amand-Durand, Paris.

The process used by this celebrated reproducer of the works of the old masters of engraving is said to be a refinement of the asphaltum process of Niepce and Niepce de St. Victor.

• 453. The Knight between Death and the Devil. From Dürer’s engraving.
• 454. The Climbers. From Marcantonio’s engraving.
• 455. Juno. From Rembrandt’s etching.

24. Boussod, Valadon & Co., Paris.

This firm uses two intaglio processes, “photo-aquatint” (see p. 60), and “photogravure.” The latter is understood to be a deposit process, by which the printing plate is produced by means of electrodeposition on a Woodbury wash-out relief charged with gritty matter. Very careful and thoroughly artistic hand-finishing adds much to the beauty of the plates issued by this house.

• 456. Pierre Mignard. Reduction of Schmidt’s engraving after Rigaud.
• 457. Scotch Bag-Piper. From a pen drawing with washes by Detaille.
• 458. Portrait of Madame Handebout-Lescot. From a pencil drawing by Ingres.
• 459. An Open Air Toilet. From a painting by Luke Fieldes.
• 460. Portrait of a man with a sword. From an oil painting.
• 461. Sarah Bernhardt. From life.

25. The Heliographic Engraving Co.. New York

The Heliographic Engraving Co., New York, of which F. von Egloffstein was the technical director, was probably the first concern which tried to introduce a photogravure process practically and on an extensive scale into the United States. As the specimens show, the process depends on the use of a lined screen, suggested by Talbot in 1852, or a “spectrum,” as Egloffstein called it, and translated even line work (see the reproduction of the Doré woodcut, No. 463), by breaking the continuity of the lines. According to Egloffstein’s patent of Nov. 21, 1865, a plate coated with “a sensitive heliographic varnish,” is first to be exposed under the “spectrum,” and then under the negative (positive). “Both images are thus blended into one, the spectrum giving texture to the photographic image. Then may follow the ordinary heliographic manipulations of developing the picture,” i.e., the etching of the plate.

• 462. Announcement of the Heliographic Engraving Co. With a view of the National Academy of Design, New York.
• 463. The Deluge. From a woodcut after Doré.
• 464. Portrait of a Gentleman. From a photograph.
• 465. A Bone. From a photograph.
• 466. A Piece of Machinery. From a photograph.

26. Louis Brown & Co., Philadelphia

Louis Brown & Co., Philadelphia, are also to be reckoned among the earlier photo-engravers of the United States, as they were awarded a medal for their “autoplates” by the American Institute in 1878. Details of process unknown.

• 467. Calendar for 1879.

27. Gebbie & Husson Co., Lim., Philadelphia.

• 468. The Thistle. From a photograph.
• 469. Dürer’s House. From a drawing?

28. The Photo-Etching Co., Boston.

• 470. The Old Crawford House. From a photograph.
• 471. Diana. From a painting.

29. The N. Y. Photogravure Co., New York.

For a description of the process employed and technically illustrated in this exhibition by the N. Y. Photogravure Co., see pp. 60 and 61.

• 472. Antique Worship. From an oil painting by V. Tojetti.
• 473., 474. Illustrations from “Elizabethan Songs,” collected and illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. Published by Little, Brown & Co. From washed drawings.
• 475. Girl Crowned with Laurel. From a painting.
• 476. Ponce-de-Leon. Gateway. From a photograph.
• 477. Ponce-de-Leon. Ladies’ entrance. From a photograph.
• 478. Landscape. From nature.
• 479. Old Willows at Magnolia. From nature.
• 480. Lily Pond. From nature.
• 481. Moonlight on the Water. From nature.
• 482. The Walk in the Woods. From nature.
• 483. Portrait of F. P. Vinton. From life.
• 484. Portrait of J. Appleton Brown. From life.
• 485. Portrait of I. M. Gaugengigl. From life.

30. A. W. Elson & Co., Boston.

For a description of the process generally employed by Messrs. A. W. Elson & Co. for the rendering of half-tone work, and technically illustrated by them in this exhibition, see p. 62. Another method used by them for the same purpose is a line process, similar to Egloffstein’s (see Nos. 462-466), involving the use of a lined glass screen and two exposures of the sensitized film on the plate, one under the screen, and one under the half-tone positive (see below, Nos. 505 and 506). They name their plates “photogravures Gilbo,” from Mr. Gilbo, the technical director of the firm.

• 486., 487. Reproductions of engravings.
• 488. Reproduction of an etching.
• 489. Landscape. From a charcoal drawing.
• 490. Reproduction of a pencil sketch.
• 491. Portrait of Wm. Lloyd Garrison. From a crayon drawing.
• 492-494. Reproductions of washed drawings.
• 495-498. Landscapes. From washed drawings.
• 499. Portrait of Franklin. From an oil painting attributed to Greuze.
• 500. Portrait of a Lady. From a black-and-white oil painting.
• 501-504. Portraits. From life.
• 505. , 506. Two specimens of the line process mentioned above.

31. Photo-intaglio processes applied to color-printing.

The proofs here exhibited, although showing a variety of colors, are each printed at one impression. The process is, in fact, a revival of that used in the 17th and 18th centuries (see Division A, Nos. 218-226), that is to say, the plate is charged with the various colors of the original, — painted as it were, — and such finishing touches as are needed are added upon the proof by hand. A comparison of Nos. 507 and 508 will make the process quite clear.

• 507. Washington medal. Printed in brown only. By the Photogravure Co., Philadelphia.
• 508. Washington medal. Printed from the same plate as No. 507, but in two colors, at one impression.
• 509. Portrait from life, with ornamental border, printed in two colors, at one impression. By the N. Y. Photogravure Co.
• 510. Reproduction of a drawing, printed in two colors, at one impression. By A. W. Elson & Co.
• 511. The Isle of Love. After Watteau. Printed in colors, at one impression. Retouched. “Goupilgravure.” By Boussod, Valadon & Co.
• 512. Preparing for the Ball. After Doucet. Printed in colors, at one impression. Retouched. “Goupilgravure.” By Boussod, Valadon & Co.

32. Woodburytype.

See the description of the process, p. 63, and the technical illustrations, No. 374 a-c.

• 513. A Mountain-Dew Girl. From life. A very early specimen, made by Woodbury himself, or under his supervision.
• 514. Sir John Gilbert. From life. By the Woodbury Permanent Photographic Printing Co., London.
• 515. The Beach at Shanklin. From nature. By the Woodbury Permanent Photographic Printing Co., London.
• 516. The Fisherman. From nature. By the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co.
• 517. Nothing in His Pockets. From a painting by Zamacois. By Goupil & Co., Paris.
• 518. Exposition Universelle. 1878. From a photograph. By “Sgap,” Paris.
• 519. F. de Lesseps. From life. By Pierre Patin, Paris.
• 520. Phœbe Mayflower. From a painting. By the American Photo-Relief Printing Co., Philadelphia.

33. Woodburytype applied to color-printing.

To produce the effect of colored photographs, Woodburytypes are printed on a chromolithographic basis in flat tints. The tints are seen through the gelatine film, which latter supplies the modelling. The specimen here shown is not a color-print in the true sense of the word, the underprinting being in gold and silver only, but it suffices to illustrate the principle.

• 521. Marguerite de Bearn. From a repoussé plaque. By “Sgap,” Paris. (Procédé Vidal.)

(b.) Planographic Processes.

Photolithography and Zincography.

1. Zurcher, Paris.

Process invented in 1842, but all that is known concerning it is that the stones were exposed under the prints to be reproduced, or in the camera, the latter, apparently, for the production of half-tone. The two prints here shown are from Blanquart-Evrard’s “La Photographic,” Lille: 1869.

• 522, 523. Reproductions of Woodcuts.

2. Lemercier, Lerebours, Barreswill & Davanne, Paris.

Process invented in 1852. A grained lithographic stone was coated with asphaltum dissolved in ether, exposed under a negative, developed by washing with ether, and then treated with acid and gum, as usual. The process was abandoned as the stones gave but few impressions.

• 524. The Door of a Romanesque Church. From a photograph.

3. Alphonse Poitevin.

Process patented in 1855. A grained lithographic stone was covered with an albuminous solution mixed with bichromate of potash, and exposed, after it had dried, under a negative. The picture was then developed, i.e., the unchanged albumen was washed away with cold water, and the stone treated with acid and gum as usual. According to one account, not only the white, but also the yolk of the egg was used in preparing the stone. Poitevin sold the process to Lemercier in 1857, who worked it for some time, but then abandoned it.

• 525. Antique Gems. From a photograph. By Poitevin himself.
• 526. Sculptures in the lunette of a Gothic church door. From a photograph. By Lemercier.
• 527. Monument to Columbus. From a photograph. By Lemercier.

4. Lodowick H. Bradford, Boston (Cutting & Bradford).

Process patented in 1858. A lithographic stone, grained for half-tone or polished for line work, was sensitized with gum arabic and a little sugar mixed with bichromate of potash, and exposed under a positive or in the camera. After exposure the unchanged gum was washed away, leaving the stone exposed in those parts which were to take the ink. It was then treated with soap water, rolled up in ink, and etched. The etching removed the hardened gum from the exposed parts.

• 528. Announcement. 1858.
• 529. Portrait from life. Exposed under a positive.
• 530. View in Boston. The stone exposed in the camera.
• 531. Statue of Franklin. The stone exposed in the camera.

5. P. Gibbons

P. Gibbons, who experimented in photolithography as early as 1859, tried various sensitizing media, such as gelatine and bichromate, varnishes, and a mixture which “consisted of copal varnish, raw linseed oil, bichromate of potash, Brunswick black, mastic varnish, and turpentine, ground up together.”

• 532. Pius IX. From a photograph. February, 1861. The stone, when the copy shown was printed, had already yielded two thousand impressions.
• 533. Portrait of Andrew Mactear. February, 1863.

6. E.I. Asser, Amsterdam.

Process invented 1859, patented in England in 1860. A sheet of paper, unsized, or slightly sized with starch, was sensitized with bichromate of potash, and exposed under an ordinary negative. It was then washed, to remove the unaltered bichromate, dried and heated, then again moistened, rolled up in transfer ink, and a transfer made to stone, which was treated with acid and gum, as usual. Like all these early processes, although some fine things were produced by it, Asser’s process never gave results of commercial value. It was worked for a while by Wm. Toovey and Simoneau & Toovey.

• 534. Seal. 1862. From a photograph.
• 535. Church of St. John, Brussels. From a photograph. By Simoneau & Toovey.
• 536. Palais de la Nation, Brussels. From a photograph. By Simoneau & Toovey.

7. Wm. Toovey, Brussels.

The process subsequently patented by Toovey was first suggested in 1861 by Hannaford, of London. A sheet of paper was prepared with bichromate of potash and gum arabic, exposed under a negative, moistened, laid down on a lithographic stone, and pulled through the press without previous inking. The theory was that the unaltered gum would adhere to the stone and protect it from the ink in the rolling up which followed, while those parts of the stone corresponding to the altered gum, would accept the ink. The stone might then be etched as usual. The process is ingenious, but never gave really practical results.

• 537. Henricus Blesius Bovinatus. From an engraving.

8. John Walter Osborne.

Line transfer process, invented at Melbourne in 1859, introduced into the United States in 1866, when the American Photolithographic Co. was organized in New York. Known as “Osborne’s Process.” See the description, p. 64, and the technical illustrations, Nos. 375 a-g, furnished by the N. Y. Photogravure Co.

• 538. The Golden Eagle. Reproduction of a woodcut. Early specimen made in Melbourne in 1859.
• 539-541. Three Views in Japan. From pen-and-ink drawings. Made in Berlin about 1861-62, for a work on Japan published by the Prussian government.
• 542. Portrait of a Man, made in Berlin about 1861-62, under an artificial negative (so-called “etching on glass”).
• 543. A page of the American Agriculturalist. Reduced. First specimen made in America, Dec. 14, 1866.
• 544. Reproduction of a wood-cut after Doré.
• 545. Extreme reduction of a wood-cut after Doré.
• 546-548. Reproductions of engravings.
• 549. Enlargement of an engraving.

9. Sir Henry James.

Photozincographic line transfer process, similar to Osborne’s process, and invented at the same time. James, however, experimented also with the production of grain, as shown by No. 551.

• 550. The Transfiguration. Reduction of an engraving. From Col. James’s book on photozincography, published in 1862.
• 551. Theodolite Wagon. Photozincograph in grain, from nature.

10. The Heliotype Printing Co., Boston, line work, “Osborne’s Process.”

• 552. Reproduction of an etching.
• 553-555. Reproductions of drawings.

11. Sprague & Co., London.

“Ink-Photos.” A photolithographic half-tone process in which the reticulation of the gelatine is used for the production of the grain.

• 556-563. Eight views, portraits, etc., from photographs from nature.

12. James Ackerman, London.

“Photo-tint.” Evidently a process similar to that used in the production of Sprague & Co.’s “ink-photos.”

• 564. Colleoni’s Monument, at Venice. From a photograph.

13. The Heliotype Printing Co., Boston, grain work.

Transfers to stone from gelatine printing surfaces, exposed under negatives, and so treated that the gelatine assumes a reticulation or grain in proportion to the amount of light that has acted upon it.

• 565-566. Two sheets, with four reproductions of photographs and drawings.

14. J. Bartos, Bohemia.

“Bartostype.” A stone or a zinc plate is coated with a varnish made of asphaltum and mastic. Upon the stone or plate so prepared a gelatine wash-out relief, made by the pigment-printing process, is mounted and treated with a mixture of glycerin and water in which a small quantity of alum has been dissolved. This relief is exposed to the sandblast, which destroys it, at first in its thinnest part and gradually also in its thicker parts. The destruction of the gelatine film lays bare the varnish, and allows the sandblast to act upon it in proportion to the gradations of the original from which the relief film was made. The result is a picture on the stone or plate in which the darks are represented by the varnish, the lights by the bare stone from which the varnish has been removed by the sandblast, and the gradations between the two extremes by the varnish more or less perforated by the blast. The stone or plate is now gummed, and after the varnish has been removed with turpentine, it is rolled up, and otherwise treated like a lithographic transfer.

• 567. Landscape, from nature. Bartostype on zinc. An iris tint has been added by a separate printing.

15. Photolithography applied to color-printing.

Two methods of utilizing photolithography (and zincography) for color-printing are illustrated here. The first, of which No. 568 is a specimen, is merely a combination of ordinary chromolithography with photolithography, i.e. the requisite colors are printed from stones prepared by an artist, and upon this underprinting a photolithograph is printed. In the second a negative is made from the drawing, painting, object, etc., to be reproduced, and with this a photolithograph is prepared by any of the methods described above. The negative serves the artist as a guide or key for making his colorstones, the combination of which is left entirely to his judgment. Or separate negatives may be made for each color, these negatives being worked upon by stopping out such parts as are not wanted and retouching others that need strengthening. From each of these negatives a photolithograph is made, and the picture results from the combined printings.

• 568. Osborne’s Process. A photolithograph from a drawing, on a chromolithograph basis.
• 569-571. Heliotype Printing Co. “Aquarelletypes.” Three monochromes from washed drawings, each printed from three stones, prepared by the same method as Nos. 565 and 566.
• 572-575. Heliotype Printing Co. “Aquarelletypes.” Four reproductions of water-color paintings. No. 572, “Six Views in Venice,” after Rhoda Holmes Nichols, printed from 5 to 9 stones; No. 573, “The Giralda,” after Hoppin, 5 stones; No. 574, “Scene in Holland,” after F. Hopkinson Smith, 7 stones; No. 575, “Scene in Holland,” after H. W. Rice, 5 stones. The stones prepared by the same method as Nos. 565 and 566.
• 576. Wezel & Naumann, Leipzig. Marine. Photo-chromozincograph, made from one negative. Printed in eighteen colors.
• 577, 578. H. Dorn, Leipzig. Two landscapes. Ingram’s Process. See No. 579.
• 579. L. Prang & Co., Boston. “Prang’s Photochromatic Process Prints.” Japanese vessels from the Morse Collection. Ingram’s process. (See Nos. 577 and 578.) “The printing design on the stone is developed from asphaltum exposed to light under a negative taken from the original objects represented.” A set of progressive proofs from nine stones.

Collographic Processes.

The collographic processes have suffered more than any others from the mania for high-sounding names. The prints resulting from them have been dubbed gelatine prints — which, being English and simplest, would be better even than collographs or collotypes — phototypes, heliotypes, albertypes, autotypes, indotints, photophanes, glyptographs, and, worse than all, photogravures, this latter in the attempt to make them pass for what they are not, i.e., prints from intaglio plates. The beauty of the results here shown makes it evident that such deception is wholly unnecessary. See the technical illustrations, Nos. 376-378.

16. E. Albert, Munich.

• 580. The Story of the Seven Ravens and the Faithful Sister. From water color drawings by Moritz von Schwind. One of Albert’s earlier publications.

17. Albert Frisch, Berlin.

• 581. Four portrait studies. From pencil drawings by A. von Werner.

18. E. Bierstadt, New York.

• 582. Landscape, from nature, reproduced twice, from a common dry plate negative and from an orthochromatic negative made through an aurantia screen.
• 583. Oil painting. Two reproductions, the same as No. 582.

19. The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

• 584-586. Three specimens, from charcoal drawings. No. 585 is heightened with white by hand.
• 587-591. Five specimens, from drawings in crayon, pen-and-ink, etc.
• 592-599. Eight specimens, from watercolors and oil paintings.
• 600-605. Six specimens, from nature and plastic objects.
• 606, 607. Two specimens, portraits from life.

20. F. Gutekunst, Philadelphia.

• 608-614. Seven specimens, from paintings.
• 615. One specimen, from a Chinese bronze.
• 616., 617. Two specimens, from vessels in motion.
• 618-622. Five specimens, four portraits and one group from life.

21. The Gravure-Etching Co., Boston.

• 623-629. Seven specimens, from paintings by M. F. H. de Haas, T. Moran, J. G. Brown, L. Lhermitte, J. Wells Champney, J. J. Enneking, and M. Theiry.

22. The Heliotype Printing Co., Boston.

• 630-632. Three specimens, from engravings.
• 633-635. Three specimens, from charcoal drawings.
• 636-638. Three specimens, from oil paintings.
• 639-644. Six specimens, from buildings.

23. The Collographic Processes applied to color-printing.

Four possibilities for utilizing the collographic processes for color-printing are illustrated here: (1.) As the gelatine film is rolled up for printing with two inks, a stronger and a weaker, supplied by two rollers, this peculiarity may be employed to produce prints with a tint at one impression. The stronger ink in that case is black (or brown, etc.), the weaker is of the color of the tint wanted. See Nos. 645-647. — (2.) A collographic impression may be printed on a chromolithographic basis in flat tints. See Nos. 648-653. — (3.) A collographic impression from a negative from the painting or other original to be reproduced may be combined with other impressions of the same kind, one for each color needed. The negatives for the films to be used for these impressions may be made from partial drawings executed on paper by an artist, like the drawings on stones for chromolithographs, or a separate negative may be made for each color, and the parts not wanted stopped out, while other parts may be strengthened by retouching. See Nos. 654-656. — (4.) The three-color theory may be employed with the aid of orthochromatic plates, one negative so treated that it is acted upon by all the rays except the blue, a second by all the rays except the yellow, a third by all the rays except the red. From these three negatives three printing films are made, and impressions from these, in blue, yellow, and red, are printed on top of one another, so that the three together produce the completed picture. To these three printings may be added a fourth, in black or brown, to strengthen the modelling. See Nos. 657-662.

• 645-647. Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Co. Three specimens, one from a drawing, two from prints, in black and a tint, printed at one impression.
• 648-653. The Heliotype Printing Co. “Heliochromes.” Six specimens, from buildings. Gelatine prints on a chromolithographic basis.
• 654. The Art Publishing Co. One specimen, from silver spoons. Five printings, the printing films for the tints made under negatives stopped out in the parts not wanted.
• 655. J. Löwy, Vienna. One specimen, from an oil-painting. This is a combination of photolithography and gelatine printing. Three stones, one for red, one for yellow, and one for blue, were made by means of three negatives stopped out accordingly, and to the combined impressions thus obtained were added several impressions from gelatine printing films for the rendering of the more delicate hues. The appearance of brush touches is due to embossing.
• 656. Meissner & Buch, Leipzig. Marine. From a water-color.
• 657. E. Albert, Munich. Three proofs from three gelatine printing films, produced under negatives made with selective color-screens, as explained above, and intended to be printed on top of one another. The impression from the red plate is, however, printed in black. As Albert was one of the first to apply the three-color theory to gelatine printing, specimens of his work are particularly interesting.
• 658, 658a. E. Albert, Munich. Two landscapes from paintings, each printed in red, blue, and yellow, as above. The smaller of the two was published in 1878. The larger is out of register, and printed too strong in the red.
• 659. E. Bierstadt, New York. “Chromatotype.” From an oil painting. Four printings, blue, yellow, red, and black. Negatives made through selective color-screens, as explained above.
• 660. E. Bierstadt, New York. “Chromatotype.” From a water-color. Three printings, blue, yellow, and red. Negatives as under No. 659. No retouching on either negatives or prints.
• 661, 662. E. Bierstadt, New York. “Chromatotype.” Two attempts at portraiture from life. Four printings, biue, yellow, red, and black. Four negatives at one sitting, made as under No. 659.

(c.) Relief Processes.

In frame 97 are grouped together some specimens by early workers in Europe and in America, regardless of methods used or results reached. The other specimens are classified as reproductions of Work in lines, dots, etc., that is to say from originals such as pen drawings, pencil drawings, process drawings (see Division E), engravings, etc., which present lines or dots or an irregular grain on a light ground. Half-tone in grain, that is to say, reproductions of half-tone originals by processes in which no screens are used, Screen Processes, and Stipple Processes, which latter involve the breaking up of the flat and gradated tints of the original by mechanical means. Husnik’s “gluetype” is placed by itself after these processes, by reason of the material used for the printing form. The application of the relief-processes to color-printing concludes the division.

1. Paul Pretsch, London.

Pretsch’s relief process is based on the same principle as his intaglio process (see p. 73), and covered by the same patent of 1854. All the specimens here shown were given by Pretsch himself to Mr. J. W. Osborne, and the writing on No. 663, which is probably the earliest of the four, is also by him. It will be seen that it is distinctly claimed that the blocks from which these impressions were printed are “absolutely untouched by the graver.”

• 663. Reliquary. From a photograph from the object.
• 664. The Village of Rivabellosa. From a photograph from nature.
• 665. Pope’s Villa on the Thames. From a photograph from nature.
• 666. Scene in Gaëta after the Explosion. From a photograph from nature.

2. Henri Garnier, Paris.

See Nos. 404 and 405. The specimens here shown are from Blanquart-Evrard’s “La Photographic,” Lille: 1869.

• 667. Plafond du Louvre. From an engraving in line.
• 668. Vue du Baptistère Louis XIII. From a photograph.

3. Eduard Heidenhaus.

“Photographotype.” Details of process not known.

• 669. Portrait of Ingres. From an etching by Masson. 1867.

4. Charles Henry, New York.

Henry’s process was a transfer line process. The original was copied on photolithographic transfer paper, by Osborne’s process (see p. 64), transferred to zinc, and then etched into relief.

• 670. Reproduction of a woodcut, with Henry’s announcement, 1868.
• 671. Reproduction of a woodcut after Doré. 1868.

5. The Actinic Engraving Co., New York.

Details of process unknown.

• 672. Melanchthon. From Dürer’s engraving. 1871.

Work in Lines, Dots, etc.

6. The Moss Engraving Co., New York.

Swell-gelatine process. See No. 383.

• 673. Six specimens, from drawings, engravings, and lace.
• 674. Ten specimens, from charcoal, crayon, and pencil drawings.

7. The Photo-Engraving Co., New York.

Etching process.

• 675. Three specimens, from drawings in lines.

8. The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

Etching process. See No. 379.

• 676. Nine specimens, from drawings in lines and on grained paper.

9. Crosscup & West, Philadelphia.

Etching process.

• 677. Three specimens, from drawing on grained paper, from wood-engraving, and from lace.

10. The C. L. Wright Gravure Co., New York.

Etching process.

• 678. Six specimens, from pencil drawings. The impressions shown, on Japan paper, were printed on the steam press for Messrs. Bates, Kimball & Guild.

Half-Tone in Grain.

11. Pennington & Co., Philadelphia.

These specimens are interesting as representing a rather early, although not very successful, attempt to produce work of this kind in the U. S. Details of process not known.

• 679. Four specimens, from photographs from nature.

12. The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

“Mezzo-types.” See Nos. 381 and 382.

• 680. Five specimens, four from architectural subjects, one from a drawing.

13. French Work.

Probably photo-aquatint in relief (“mezzotype,” see Nos. 381 and 382) of a very fine grain.

• 681. From a painting. From “Salon lllustré. Société des Artistes Français.” Paris: 1890.

Screen Processes.

14. Moritz and Max Jaffé, Vienna.

Patented in Austria, March 1, 1877. To break up the fiat tints and gradations of the original, bolting cloth was placed before the sensitive plate in the camera, or inserted between an ordinary negative and the sensitized plate on which the engraving was to be made.

• 682. Portrait. From life. Published in Eder’s “Jahrbuch,” from a block made in 1877.

15. Meisenbach, Munich.

Process patented in 1882. The descriptions given of the manner in which the screen is used in the Meisenbach process vary, and it is quite likely that changes have been introduced since it was first made known. The present method seems to be to place a screen ruled with diagonal lines (not cross-lined) at a slight distance before the sensitized plate in the camera, and, after a short exposure, to turn the screen, or rather to substitute another for it, so that the lines on it run in the opposite direction, and to expose the plate a second time.

• 683. Portrait. From life. Block made by the etching process. From an announcement issued by the Meisenbach Co., London, in 1885.

16. Boussod, Valadon & Co., Paris.

• 684. Dogs. From a painting by De Penne.

17. Schweizer Autotyp-Anstalt, Winterthur.

On the dry plates used, and sold to others, by this firm for the making of half-tone negatives for relief-blocks, a screen, either cross-lined or in grain, is developed by the usual photographic methods, and over this is laid another sensitive film, on which, by a subsequent exposure, the picture, scene, etc., to be made into a relief block, is photographed. The result is a “half-tone” negative, which can be used like those made by the other screen processes previously described. In this case, however, the screen, instead of being before and at a slight distance from the sensitive plate, is behind and in intimate contact with it.

• 685. Sample sheet, showing the various grades of grained and cross-lined screen dry plates made by this firm.
• 686. Two specimens, from a painting and from nature, made with the grained Swiss screen dry plates.
• 687. Two specimens, from nature and from life, made with the cross-lined Swiss screen dry plates.

18. The Moss Engraving Co., New York.

“Moss-types.”

• 688. Six specimens, from paintings and washed drawings.
• 689. Nine specimens, from nature and from life.

19. Photo-Engraving Co., New York.

• 690. Five specimens, two from engravings, one from a painting, two from nature.

20. The Boston Engraving Co., Boston.

See No. 380.

• 691. Eight specimens, one from an engraving, one from a washed drawing, six from nature.

21. The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

See Nos. 386-388.

• 692. Seven specimens, six from nature, one from a bust.
• 693. Six specimens, from nature.
• 694. Seven specimens, six from nature, one from a painting.
• 695. Three specimens, two from nature, one from a painting.

22. M. Wolfe, Dayton, O.

See No. 385.

• 696. Eight specimens, from nature. All made with cross-line plates or screens similar to the one shown (No. 385b), except the last, which was made according to Meisenbach’s method, that is to say, with diagonally lined screens, turned, at two exposures.

23. The John Andrew & Son Co., Boston.

See the frame hung on the wall, over case 106.

• 697. Nine specimens from washed drawings and from nature.

24. Crosscup & West, Philadelphia.

“Ives Process.” This is a screen process similar to those illustrated under Nos. 385-388, and must not be confounded with the earlier process of the same name, for which see No. 703.

• 698. Eight specimens from paintings and washed drawings.
• 699. Six specimens, views from nature.
• 700. Three specimens, two from sculpture, one from machinery.
• 701. Seven specimens, portraits and groups.
• 702. Seven specimens, from insects, etc.

Stipple Processes.

In these processes the property of gelatine in its natural state to absorb water and to swell up in consequence, and the fact that it loses this property, if it is mixed with a bichromate and exposed to light, in exact proportion to the amount of light that has acted upon it, is utilized. A swell-gelatine relief is made under a negative, and from this relief a cast in plaster of Paris. The gelatine relief was lowest in the parts corresponding to the darks, and highest in those corresponding to the lights of the picture. The cast, on the contrary, is highest in the darks and lowest in the lights. Such a cast, or rather mould, is exhibited under No. 368. Against it is pressed a gelatine film on a glass plate, which has been cut up into lines, or into dots by cross-lines, and has been charged on the surface of the lines or dots with printing ink. As this film comes into contact with the cast, the lines or dots, being elastic, are compressed in proportion to the height of the relief, and therefore produce on it larger and smaller black dots, while in the deepest parts, where the lines or dots cannot reach, the cast remains white. The result is that the white relief is covered with black dots which are largest in those parts of it corresponding to the blacks of the design, and gradually decrease in size as the gradations of the original approach white. From the cast so stippled, a black and white negative is made, which is used exactly as a negative made with a screen process would be used. This is the original “Ives Process,” illustrated by the specimens here shown, under No. 703. It gave excellent results, as the specimens in question show, but it has been superseded by the screen processes. A similar process was invented by Petit, of France. He blackened a plaster cast from a swelled gelatine relief all over, and cut through its surface in parallel or crossing lines by a V-shaped point, travelling always in the same plane. The point cut a wider line in the highest parts of the blackened relief and therefore removed more of the black, whereas the lines grew narrower as the relief subsided, and solid blacks were left in its deepest parts, to which the point did not reach. It is evident from this, that Petit must have made his relief under a positive, or else must have made a true cast from the mould first obtained from the relief.

25. Crosscup & West, Philadelphia.

The original “Ives Process.”

• 703. Twelve specimens, from drawings, paintings, and nature.

26. Husnik’s “Gluetype.”

A wash-out process, similar to that illustrated under No. 384, which produces printing blocks made of hardened gelatine. These blocks are said to be very durable and able to stand long editions.

• 704. Three specimens, printed from gluetype blocks made according to Husnik’s patent.

Relief Processes Applied to Color-Printing.

See the technical illustrations, Nos. 389 and 390 (p. 71).

27. German work.

• 705. Six reproductions of chiaroscuros of the 16th and 17th century. From Hirth & Muther’s “Meisterholzschnitte aus vier Jahrhunderten.”

28. The Art Publishing Co., Boston.

• 706. Nine specimens, by screen process and in mezzotype, from watercolor drawings and paintings. Two to four printings.

29. George L. Cowee, Boston.

• 707. Two specimens, from watercolor drawings.

30. W. Kurtz, New York.

The blocks, from which the proofs shown were printed, were etched on zinc prepared with asphaltum, exposed under negatives made by the Meisenbach process.

• 708. Wild Boars, from an etching after Rosa Bonheur. Two printings. Impressions of each of the two blocks used, printed in black, are also shown.
• 709. Monkeys. From an oil painting. Two printings.
• 710. Eight specimens, reproductions of washed drawings. Two printings.
• 711. From a watercolor by Corelli. Printed in colors.

31. Boussod, Valadon & Co., Paris.

“Chromotypogravures.”

• 712. Going to School. After Bouguereau. Two printings.
• 713. The Gallant Abbé. From a watercolor by Rossi. Six printings.
• 714. En Forêt. — La Balançoire. — Les Derniers Retranchements. — Three plates from the “Figaro lllustré.” Printed in colors.
• 715. Figaro lllustré, with the design for the cover (printed in six colors), to show application to newspaper work.
• 716. Bringing up the Guns. From an oil painting by Gilbert Gaul. Printed in colors.

32. “Sgap,” Paris.

“Photochromotypographie.”

• 717. A Rug. Printed in colors.

33. C. Angerer & Göschl, Vienna.

• 718. Landscape. Chiaroscuro in four printings.

34. Autotypie-Compagnie, Munich.

Meisenbach process.

• 719. Oil Sketch after Kotschenreiter. Four printings.

E. Drawing for Photo-Mechanical Process Work.

The necessity for a special kind of work, known as “process drawing,” arose out of the fact that the photo-mechanical relief processes used for the reproduction of line work or of work in dots, must have originals, if success is to be assured, which are absolutely black in all their parts, without any admixture of grays. Some of the reproductions shown in this exhibition (see No. 674 and 678, for instance) make it evident, indeed, that excellent results can be gotten even from pencil drawings, but while these will do for thoroughly artistic work, and where a suggestion is sufficient, the nicety of execution and clearness of statement more generally demanded cannot be attained unless the originals to be reproduced accommodate themselves to the exigencies of the reproducing agency. In the light of the explanations given on the preceding pages, it will not be difficult to understand these exigencies. A negative, to give good results for relief work with either the etching, the swell-gelatine, or the wash-out process, must be simply black and white, that is to say, it must present perfectly clear glass in those parts which correspond to the lines of the design, and it must be absolutely black and dense in those which represent the whites between the lines. (For such negatives, see Nos. 323, 375b, 379b, 380b, 383b, and 384b.) Gray lines, however, can produce neither perfectly clear glass, nor perfect density. They will be represented in the negative by something between these extremes, that is to say, by a thinner deposit, which will neither cut off all the light, nor allow all of it to pass. The result, in such a case, must necessarily be one of three things: such gray lines will fail altogether in the reproduction, or they will be rotten, or, if they come up black and solid, they will be too heavy. In either case, the effect will be marred, and such beauty as the original may have had will be lost in the reproduction. The first consideration, therefore, which the process draughtsman must keep constantly in mind, is that all the lines of his drawing must be absolutely black, and that all gradations must be produced by difference in width of line and difference in spacing. Several drawings of this kind are to be found in this exhibition, besides the one shown in the present division (No. 725). Of these, Nos. 379a, and 380a, are free-hand drawings, while No. 383a, represents a style of work, in imitation of engraving, which is a peculiar product of photo-mechanical process draughtsmanship. (See a reproduction of a very large drawing of this kind under No. 675). The drawing in question at the same time illustrates in another way a method of working much practiced for the purpose. It is executed on a faint photograph, which was bleached out after the drawing was finished. As, however, it is not always desirable to have drawings in line or in stipple executed with the pen or the point of the brush, a number of devices have been invented to enable the artists to make grained drawings quickly and at the same time with due regard to the prime requisite alluded to. These devices, — embossed and printed papers, “shading mediums,” etc., — are illustrated in this division. The reproductions from process drawings which have been added, may, perhaps, serve to show that the character of this class of work need not necessarily be inartistic. No doubt much of the process-drawing seen to day is utterly bad. It is to be hoped that, as the processes have evidently come to stay, a class of draughtsmen will be raised, who, while thoroughly acquainted with the needs and limitations of their work, will be at the same time thoroughly artistic.

1. Embossed and printed papers. — Shading mediums. — Pasting tints.

• 720. Samples of embossed and printed papers, made by Chas. J. Ross, Burlington, N. J.
• 721. Drawings made on Ross’s papers, with reproductions from them.
• 722. Samples of embossed and printed papers, made by Benjamin Day, New York. — Drawings made on such papers and reproductions from them. — Pasting tints, i.e., papers with lined and stippled tints printed on them, to be pasted on drawings for reproduction, where large spaces are to be uniformly shaded. (In a frame on the wall, over case 93.)
• 723. Day’s rapid shading mediums. Representation and description of the apparatus used.
• 724. Drawing made with Day’s mediums, by Benjamin Day. The drawing itself was made on lithographic stone, and only an impression from it is shown. But it might just as well have been made on paper, and therefore sufficiently illustrates the use that may be made of these “mediums” for process drawing.

2. Process drawings, with the blocks made from them.

• 725. Drawing, “Beethoven,” in absolutely black lines and masses, executed on Bristol board with pen and brush. — (a.) The drawing. — (b.) The block made from it. — (c.) Impression from the block. — The Art Publishing Co.
• 726. Drawing, cover for an exhibition catalogue, made with wax crayon on embossed and printed paper, the lights scraped. — (a.) The drawing. — (b.) The block made from it. — (c.) Impression from the block.— The Art Publishing Co.

3. Reproductions of Process Drawings.

• 727. Study, after Daniel Huntington. Drawn by Chas. Mettais on embossed and printed paper, with wax crayon, the lights scraped.
• 728. Morning, after Wm. Rimmer. Drawn by Chas. Mettais, on printed paper, with wax crayon.
• 729. Head of an Italian. Drawn by T. W. Dewing, from his own painting, with wax crayon, on grained paper.
• 730. October. Drawn by H. Bolton Jones, from his own painting, with wax crayon, on grained paper.
• 731. Portrait. Drawn by F. P. Vinton, from his own painting, with wax crayon, on grained paper.
• 732. Ideal Landscape, after M. G. Wheelock. Drawn by Edmund H. Garrett, with wax crayon, on grained paper. Scraping in the clouds.
• 733. Studio of Wm. M. Chase, from a sketch by him. Drawn by Chas. Mettais, with wax crayon, on grained paper.
• 734. Study, after Trumbull. Drawn by Chas. Mettais, with wax crayon, on grained paper.