. (Any Old iron) and gum printing in the 1850s and 1970s

 John

If you are gong to quote the Harry Champion's song 'Any Old Iron' you
should know the Max Miller who got banned from BBC radio in the forties for his
song which began When violets are blue..'

I do not know what Steinbock's first name was or when the lectures were.. I
would be more helpful if you could let me have some idea of your agenda.

If you go back to the 1850s and have a look at gum prints by Pouncey, you
will see what I mean by hyper-reality. The tonal range and the gradation were
obtained by using 'indian ink' as the pigment.
Steinbock's prints were also black monochromes but smaller than Pouncey's,
half plates i think. As I said, I was making 20 x 16 multicolur prints.. There
was a Pouncey in the RPS collection and there are contemporary
photo-mechanically reproduced versions of them in the library in Dorchester (Dorset not
Oxfordshire).

Many of us do gum printing now but there were very few when this all happened
in the early seventies (in the UK). Now I have been teaching gum and most
things from Wedgwood to gravure for four generations or more. My daughter's
lecturer had an exhibition of under glaze gum prints on ceramics at the Orleans
gallery a few years ago. On chatting to him I found that I had taught his
lecturer how to do it.

I learned subsequently that Pete had written his book 'Sun Printing' but then
Pete told me that he had worked on the development of his whole egg process
as he had not been able to emulate the gum prints that had got me my FRPS. How
are Pete and the rest of you from 'The Essex Mafia'?.

On that performance Steinbock would have made a rotten teacher if the idea of
teaching is to communicate ideas rather maintain commercial secrets a
la Fresson. One of things that comes across in the literature over the years is that
some 'teachers' hide behind obscurities to hide their ignorance.

No-one owns gum printing, what was bizarre was that Steinbock thought that
gum printing was somehow his ! I acknowledged, in front of that audience, that
it was seeing his prints that got me started but then I saw Demachy and Puyo
prints and Steichens and the work of the Photo-Secession and the Linked Ring
and it was these that provided the inspiration. The prints I was maiing were
so different from the standard idea of gum printing , or Steinbock's little
black and white prints ,that sometimes, even today, i find it difficult to
convince people that they are gum prints. One thing I found in the commercial field
was that the very mention of 'gum print' invoked images of fuzzy picrtures
with crude colours. because that was all the art directors had seen. Maybe I
should call the ones made using my technique something else.

 I only 'met' Steinbock twice, once when he gave a lecture and I was in the
audience and once when i gave a lecture and he was in the audience

There had been a number of articles in various magazines about my gum prints
(neither by me nor promoted by me);.There was nothing specific about that
lecture.

Terry
Received on Sun Apr 9 13:14:04 2006