I assumed the plates in "Masterpieces of Antique Art" were indeed
woodburytypes, but still find it hard to tell woodburytypes from carbon
prints. Judging from the list I've been compiling, the "permanent
photograph" designation seems to be fairly frequently applied to what are
indisputibly woodburytypes, but can, however, also be used for carbon
prints. From the date alone, I think it quite likely that John's portfolio
'The Seven Cartoons of Raphael' (1870) does indeed consist of carbon prints;
books illustrated with woodburytypes seem to be much more common towards the
end of the 1870s. Plate sizes generally increase too. John is right to
question whether Griffith and Farran used woodburytypes in their
publications - this is indeed the only book of theirs I'm aware of, but from
a cursory survey of their output seems to be quite out of character for them
anyway (they published religious books, novels, and children's books, but
few if any art or gift books). Unlike John or Jim Hajicek I don't have any
experience in printing woodburytypes but I imagine the amount of the relief
found in the printed image probably depends on the depth of the mould -
perhaps a particularly shallow mould, calling for much darker ink, would
display much less relief.
The State Library of Victoria has the best collection of woodburytypes in
Australia, but has a couple of books that still leave me puzzled. For
example, the large size and excellent quality of the plates in Henry Hardy
Cole's The Architecture of Ancient Delhi (1872) makes me suspect they are
carbon prints. As Luis mentioned, skies often provide a clue since they tend
to be mottled, or were wiped clean as in Captain W. de W. Abney's Thebes
(1876). Sometimes I've been able to find contemporary reviews that identify
particular plates, as in the reference to the frontispiece of H. P.
Robinson's Pictorial Effect in Photography (1869), mentioned in a review in
the Photographic News.
On the other hand, a book by Rev. James Gerald Joyce, The Fairford Windows
(1872), which Charles B. Wood recently identified as containing hand
coloured woodburytypes must definitely consist of carbon prints, since some
of the images are multiple printed with clean borders (i.e. two or three
images together on one piece of paper). As Jim Hajicek points out
"Woodburytypes inherently have messy borders making it necessary to always
trim the print and eventually tip it on to another sheet of paper for final
presentation." But then again the evidence of one image isn't necessarily
conclusive - it wasn't unheard of for both carbon and woodburytype to be
used in the same book, as in John Thomson's Through Cyprus with a Camera
(1879),
The question is probably pretty academic for most us without the resources
and expertise of the conservation section in the Getty Museum, but perhaps
the only way to non-destructively determine whether the plates in Terry's
book are woodburytypes might involve using x-ray diffraction spectroscopy to
test for traces of chromium. Some probably remain in a carbon print (Luis?),
but the 'ink' used to produce woodburytypes would consist solely of gelatine
and colouring matter.
Collotype and woodburytype co-existed for quite awhile. Both were
superseded by the type-compatible halftone, but the collotype was able to
hang around a fair bit longer because of its greater potential for
mechanization and the ability to print images with clean edges that didn't
need mounting. Bruckmann in 1882 provide a very good example of how they
used various processes for different print runs - for small jobs they used
silver, for larger jobs where the trouble of producing a mould was warranted
they used woodburytype, and for really large jobs they used collotype.
Philip (who really should have gone home ages ago to mix up some more
dichromated jelly!)