Re: Artigue and Fresson Printing

Luis Nadeau (nadeaul@nbnet.nb.ca)
Sun, 01 Feb 1998 18:00:48 -0400

At 2:51 AM -0500 98/02/01, Art Chakalis wrote:

...

>He goes on to write that this machine is the one that Nadeau ultimately
>purchased and moved to Canada. Keep in mind that this is still hearsay but
>it is interesting to note that though slightly different than your
>analysis it is surprisingly similar. If one assumes that the raw paper is
>first coated with a base layer of white pigmented gelatin and that Ortiz
>was not giving the exact order in which the layers went down then the two
>descriptions could both be of the same process/material.
>
>One other significant comment from Bill Foster is that after Oritz-Echague
>bought the machine he seemed to produce very few prints due to; being 80
>plus years old OR was his homemade paper not up to the standard of
>"Fresson Paper". I personally wonder if the process and/or machine were
>incomplete.

It's not incomplete. During my two visits with him, I noticed that Ortiz
was wearing very thick glasses, which he kept changing all the time. My
first visit was in 1976, ten years after he bought the process and he was
about 90 years old by then. He was not active at that time. I knew nothing
of the process yet so I just assumed that as with most processes, it could
be used by any old man. Was I wrong!

As mentioned in my books and here before, it took me a whole year before I
got decent results with the process. About 90% of the problems were
machine/coating related. On many occasions I felt like throwing in the
towel. It was like a deaf person trying to learn to play violin from a
book. What kept me going was the knowledge that the damn process had been
in use for nearly a century and after 10 years of work and negotiations to
acquire it I wasn't going to give up that easily. I finally succeeded. With
hands-on training however, I would say that a period of about one week,
with the original equipment and everything, would be enough to teach the
process to someone with excellent eyesight and steady hands, who has
already mastered a process like carbon transfer printing.

Contrary to what many people seem to believe, there is more to the process
than mixing a few drops of liquid, hand-coat it on the paper and 10 minutes
later you're ready to expose. This is no platinotype. The process is much
more difficult than carbon transfer, a process above the heads of probably
more than 90% of the people on this list. Not that it has to be. Most
people could learn carbon transfer the same way people can learn languages
or play piano. The fact of the matter is that most people don't have the
dedication that is needed to achieve these things. It's so much more fun to
play golf:)

One of my customers (a wellknown museum) recently showed me 3 Fressons
Ortiz made on paper coated by himself after 1966, when he was in his 80s.
The quality is much inferior to his early work. This confirms that he was
too old to master the manufacturing process by then.

>I hope that the analytical work in progress will provide some new and
>valuable information.

>From what I can see, you should have most of the formulas worked out by the
next ice age, at which point you'll only have to worry about the coating
process;-)

Good luck.

Luis Nadeau
NADEAUL@NBNET.NB.CA
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
http://www3.nbnet.nb.ca/nadeaul/