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How Vintage Posters And Antique Art Prints Were Made A major feature of posters and prints is that they are mass produced. Probably the first technology that could do this was the Chinese / Japanese woodcut. Later came the lithograph, then the numerous methods of modern technology. With color printers on computers so common, we often don't appreciate what our ancestors achieved without them. Woodcut Woodcuts were first used in ancient China, becoming rather common by 6th century C.E. In both Japan and Europe, the labor could be divided among artist, wood carvers, printers. The first step was to create a drawing on paper. Then one could either copy the design, reversed, onto wood blocks, or trace the face-down drawing onto wood with a sharp marker or knife, destroying the original art. The wood was then cut away where no ink was to be printed. First wood cuts were like ink drawings, dark on light. Later such wood cuts were hand colored with brush work. More recently, one or more blocks were cut for each color to be printed, with mechanical guides to align the layers. For printing, ink was transferred to each block with a roller, so that the cut-away regions were not coated. Two limitations with wood cuts are (1) the resolution for fine detail, (2) the wearing of the blocks during long print runs, so that detail degraded. Lithograph Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Bohemia in 1798. Reversed image masters were drawn with oily media (e.g., lithographic grease crayons) on flat stone blocks, which were then chemically processed, to make exposed areas water friendly (hydrophilic). Thus the name lithos = stone + graph = draw. Water based ink were applied with rollers, so that the hydrophilic areas hold the ink for later transfer to paper. As with woodcuts, first lithographs were for dark on light monochrome, later hand painted, then increasingly in the mid to late 1800s, involved multiple stones with at least one for each color, such as the familiar Red-Blue-Green. These later works were often called chromolithographs, to distinguish from hand colorized prints. Such well known printers as Currier and Ives used human assembly lines of immigrant girls for hand colorizing. Lithograph stones wore more slowly than woodcut blocks, but did wear. Often stones were ground in damaged areas and re processed, so a given title made at different times can show small variations. Modern lithography can use non-stone substrates, such as metal sheets, and other mutually repulsive media than grease pencils and water. Photo-lithography uses photographic exposures with chemical etching, and can be made on metal plates or drums for high speed printers. Similar techniques are now used to manufacture very high density semiconductor electronic chips. Engraved Metal Engraved metal surfaces for printing were first made in ancient China. The modern term is Intaglio, in which engraved holes of different depths hold the ink. The photographic version was initially developed in the 1830s in both England and France, and was named Photogravure. For high speed presses, such as for newspapers and magazines, the flat surface was replaced by a metal drum, called Rotogravure, and is also used for industrial manufacture. The Halftone process uses equally spaced holes of different diameters, and is rather grainy compared to the prior versions, as commonly seen in newspapers. A further variation is "offset printing", in which the inked image is transferred to an intermediate surface, such as a rubber sheet or roller, which then contacts the paper. Offset printing can be very inexpensive for large print runs, but costly for setup. Photograph Early photography used light sensitive coatings on metal or glass plates, which had to be prepared and developed on location. Old monochrome photos are often tones of colors other than black on white. In 1888, Eastman Dry Plate Company unleashed photography for common people by creating photo emulsions on flexible rolls, and the Kodak box camera that originally had to be delivered to the laboratory with the film. In 1907 color film was introduced by the Lumière brothers in France, which helped to spell the death of Currier and Ives. [Also see Photochrom and Prokudin-Gorskii, below.] Photochrom Photochroms are essentially color lithographs made from black and white photographs. The process was invented and patented by PhotoGlob AG of Zurich, with process and photos licensed to Detroit Photographic Company for USA manufacture. A set of lithography stones was prepared from a black and white photo glass-plate negative, each to be printed with own color. This process was popular in the 1890s before color photography became commercially practical. Thousands of "penny postcard" images were printed for the U.S. Post Office, and numerous picture postcards were made in Europe by PhotoGlob Co. The P.Z. on print labels stands for PhotoGlob Zurich. The Detroit Photographic Company is long gone (thanks to color film), but PhotoGlob is now on-line at http://www.photoglob.ch/ Pre Film Color Photos Practical color film was invented in 1907, became available for ordinary people about 1936. A novel process was used by Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorskii (or Gorsky) to photograph the Russian Empire about 1909-1915; three black and white exposures were made through Red-Blue-Green filters, then later projected as color images through similar filters. Actual prints were not made until about 2000, when the U.S. Library of Congress used both projection and digital reconstruction on negatives purchased from the descendants. Some amateurs around the internet have added to the digital reconstructions. Several other pre-film technologies are described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_film Posters Most old circus and theater posters were made as lithographs, some as woodcuts. Many examples used around the world were lithographed in the U.S.A. Sometimes a blurring can be seen, caused by mis alignment of the color layers. Viewing The internet is rich with examples of vintage posters and antique art prints, both originals (usually costly) and reproductions. Many reproductions are offset printed, some are made with giclee or laser printers, so the shopping public can be very confused as to cost, price, value. Examples of antique woodcuts, lithographs, Photochroms, and Prokudin-Gorskii reconstructions can be viewed at author's web site. D.A. Miller, PhD, is a physicist who is fascinated by mass produced color prints achieved before color film was available. His digital restorations can be viewed at http://oldcolorprint.com. Source:
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This page compliments of Marisa Ciceran Created:
Saturday, February 92, 2008; Last updated:
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
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