Carbon

Some years ago I commented on this list that in the 19C carbon printing was
regarded as a job for 'the boy' in up market commercial photography studios.
The comment had come from an 1890s British Journal of Photography Almanac I
was subsequently led to believe that this had upset some people.

One has to remember that carbon printing in this context implied an every day
procedure using commercially available carbon tissue from. for example, the
Autotype Company, rather than the more complicated procedure involved in making
one's own tissue. But carbon tissue is still available commercially from the
same Autotype company, if one is prepared to buy it by the mile and one
accepts burnt sienna as the colour. It is easier, of course, to buy it from Dick
Sullivan who has developed carbon tissue in different colours for the alternative
processes market.

Sandy King told me, at APIS in 2005 in Santa Fe, that someone had trawled
through 19C BJs to find the 'easy' reference to carbon printing but could
not find it. This morning, while browsing through a BJ from twenty years
earlier, I found a reference from the issue of March 9 1877 where in a letter from
Sir Thomas Parkyns, who had visited the studio of Mr Witcomb in Salisbury,
Wiltshire, to see how easy it was to make carbon prints using the Autotype
company's tissue, he found that 'A youth of sixteen years of age had management of
the production of the prints' 'A young lady' had taken the negatives.' The
prints were put in the printing frame at 10.55 and Mr Witcomb delivered them to Sir
Thomas by 12.12. The prints were judged successful. There was much fuss
going on at the time as the Autotype patents were about to expire. Many were
saying that the process was difficult to operate, Sir Thomas delivered fine carbon
prints to the BJ's editorial offices where anyone could examine them, while a
gentleman from Ceylon, where he was making 11 x 14 enlargements in tropical
conditions, pointed out that in order to get the process to work properly, all
one had to do was follow the instructions.

I have been using the Autotype tissue for many years transferring the image
to Fabriano Artistico.
Suddenly, I only seem to be able to transfer the image to fixed out RC paper.
As the gentleman from Ceylon said in 1877, 'I will need to sort out the
glitch".

Terry King
Received on Mon May 1 00:08:44 2006