Mats,
I don't have my books at hand right now and can't get correct titles, but
you should try to get your hands on one French book by Leon Vidal, I think
it's title is "La Photoglyptie", from the 1870s or 80s (?). It is on
microfilm in the George-Eastman-House Library and at Rochester Institute of
Technolgy Library - maybe you can get print-outs from them. You should be
able to contact both libraries through the internet, but maybe the books
are available through libraries in your country, too. The book has also
been translated into German. Also, Josef Maria Eder has a lengthy chapter
on the Woodburytype in his "Ausfuehrliches Handbuch der Photographie", Vol.
IV, 3rd part: "Heliogravuere und Rotationstiefdruck...". The Vidal ist the
best, Eder mostly quotes him.
Anyway, you should be able to make perfect carbon prints before you attempt
to make woodburytypes and you should have some experience in making the
carbon tissue, i.e. coating a thick 20% dichromated gelatin solution
perfectly on collodion-coated glass. After drying and stripping from the
glass support, you expose the gelatin through the collodion, develop,
harden and dry. You will then need lead plates ca. 3/4 to 1 cm thick. With
a press, that provides a pressure of ca. 500 kg per square centimeter, you
now press the relief into the lead. On another (less powerful) press you
then do the actual printing, i. e. you fill the embossed lead plate with
warm liquid colored gelatin, lay a sheet of gelatin- or shellac-coated
paper on top and simply press the excess gelatin out. Good illustrations
and descriptions are in both books, Vidal is more complete. Oh, yes, my
description is leaving out probably 95% of the required steps and
everything not mentioned in these books ;-)
So, if you are not intending to print more than some hundred prints per
plate, you may rather stay with conventional carbon transfer printing: Even
experienced photo conservators have difficulties to distinguish a
woodburytype from a carbon print and by the time you have mastered the
woodburytype process, you may well have printed some thousand carbon
prints...
That the process really is complicated may become obvious by the fact that
after he got the patent in 1865, Walter B. Woodbury was able to sell it to
a few printing companies only worldwide, mostly in Britain, Scotland,
Belgium and France. In Germany, it never was used, because the collotype
(which also is quite complex!) served as high quality printing process for
fine art reproduction - and photogravure (i. e. industrial rotogravure)
printing quickly superseded both.
Klaus Pollmeier
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