Impressions, editions & states

Last week I posted a listing of print abbreviations and terms, and previously I have posted definitions of various print terms. Today I will discuss three print terms which are of fundamental importance to understanding antique prints: “impression,” “edition” and “state.”

I probably should start by defining what I mean by a “print.” A single print is a piece of paper upon which an image has been imprinted from an object called a “matrix.” A matrix is an object (it is usually made of wood, metal or stone, but can be any material) upon which a design has been formed and which is then used to create an image of that design onto the paper.

An impression is a single piece of paper with an image printed on it from a matrix. The terms as applied to prints is used in a manner similar to the term “copy” as applied to a book. In a general sense, one can consider a print as the set of all impressions made from the same matrix. That is, there is both the single print (as a single impression) and the print in a general sense as all the examples of, say, Currier & Ives’ “The Road, Winter.”

An edition of a print includes all the impressions published at one time or as part of a single publishing endeavor. New impressions of a print would count as a new edition if there is a significant break in time before they were printed or if there were some change in the way the print is made. There can be all sorts of different editions, such as proof editions, first editions, later editions, restrike editions, numbered editions, and limited editions.

A state of a print includes all the impressions made from a matrix with there being no change made to that matrix. When impressions are pulled from a matrix which has been modified, these impressions form a new state of the print.

States of a print should be distinguished from editions of a print. There can be several editions of a print which are all the same state (for instance if the publisher decides a year later to republish a print but makes no changes to the matrix), or there can be several states of a print in the same edition (for instance if the publisher discovers an error in the matrix, fixes it, and then continues to print new impressions).

These definitions are nice and neat, but the issues involved are actually fairly complex. For instance, it is not clear whether one should call impressions pulled from a matrix where there is an accidental change a new state. Say a very slight crack appears in the matrix, which shows up as a faint line in the new impressions. Is this a new state? And as that crack widens, is each new set of impressions a new state? However, the basic intent of these terms is quite clear and in most practical cases it is clear to what they refer.

Original or Reproduction?

Telling an original print or map from a reproduction can sometimes be very easy, and other times quite difficult. [Click here for discussion of the differences between originals and reproductions] Below are some tests you can make which might tell you what you have.

Printing process
The most definitive method of determining whether a print is an original or a reproduction is by examination of its production process. All reproductions are made by a different process than originals; reproductions are photomechanically produced and originals are not. This difference in process can usually be spotted by an expert and in some cases is quite obvious.

• Most reproductions are made from a dot-matrix or half tone process, which produces a lentiginous image composed of a symmetrical pattern of small dots.. If you look through a fairly powerful magnifier (e.g. 10X) and you see little dots (either black & white or color), then you have a reproduction.
  
  
• If the print is supposed to be an intaglio print (engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, etc.), then if there are big enough margins, a platemark should appear. Note that fake platemarks are not uncommon, but these usually differ in character from real platemarks. Also, the ink in an itaglio print will often feel raised from the surface, so if the print surface feels absolutely smooth, this is a clue that it is not an intaglio print.
  
  
• If the print is supposed to be a lithograph or woodcut or wood engraving, then there should be no platemark. If a platemark appears, you likely have a reproduction.
  
  
• Most intaglio prints, woodcut and wood engravings, when colored, are colored by hand with watercolors. If the color is printed and the print is supposed to be one of these types, then this is another clue you have a reproduction.
  

Paper
As a general rule, almost all prints and maps printed before 1800 are on laid paper and almost all prints and maps printed after 1800 are on wove paper.

• Laid paper is made by hand in a mold, where the wires used to support the paper pulp emboss their pattern into the paper. This pattern of closely spaced, crossing lines can be seen when the paper is held up to light. The first example of the use of wove paper in western printing was in 1757, so any print or map made before that should certainly be on laid paper. However, even in the second half of the eighteenth century, the use of wove paper was relatively rare, increasing in instances the closer to the end of the century. Also, some modern paper has false laid lines and reproductions often add false laid lines to make the item look more authentic. Thus the appearance of liad lines in the paper is a clue to authenticity, but not proof positive.
  
  
• Wove paper, in contrast, is made on a woven belt and lacks the laid lines. Thus the paper will lack the pattern of crossing lines when held up to the light. Though laid paper was used after 1800, the use of laid paper became less and less common as the nineteenth century progressed.
  

Other

• Look for any printed information which indicates the print is a reproduction, e.g. “reproduced from” or a copyright notice, etc.
  
  
• The best way to tell what you have is to try to find a reference book which features the map or print you are trying to research. This can be a collection listing, an exhibition catalogue, or a or catalogue raisonné. These references often list details about the prints or maps and you can compare these to your print or map. Among the details to check are title, measurements and the exact wording of any imprint information. Note that old prints do vary a bit in size, but the measurements should be within about 1/4” of the recorded size.
  
  
• Many prints and maps were issued in bound volumes and if the item is large, then it will often have to have been folded to fit into the volume. This is especially true for old maps, where the majority of original antique maps from before the nineteenth century have a "centerfold." The appearance of a centerfold is often good evidence that you have an original.
  

Note that none of these tests are certain, for there are exceptions to all of them. Also, even if your print passes these tests this doesn’t mean that it is original, though failure of any indicates it probably is a reproduction. Ultimately the issue must be decided by knowing what process the print should be and knowing what the paper should be like. This often takes an expert to determine for certain.

You can read more about how to tell an original map in a "Tips of the Trade" article on the Antiques Roadshow web site.

You can read more about the different ways prints were made in the Antique Prints Blog posts on print processes.

Chine Appliqué

A chine appliqué print (also called a chine collé print) is a print where the image has been impressed onto a thin sheet of China paper (or other thin paper) and then that thin sheet is backed by a strong, thicker sheet of paper. These are fairly easy to spot: often the backing paper will age to a different color than the China paper, but even if not when you look closely at a chine appliqué print you can see the edge of the China sheet (usually just beyond the edge of the printed image).

Chine appliqué prints were made a fair bit in the nineteenth century for a number of different types of images. The reason this was done is because the thin China paper takes an intaglio impression more easily than a thicker sheet of paper, so that that chine appliqué often has a richer appearance than a standard print. This was sometimes done for proof prints (cf. blog on proof prints).

To this extent a chine appliqué print is often more desirable than a standard print, however there are several possible problems associated with these prints. First, the quality of the backing sheet is often not as good as that of a standard print, so this will sometimes discolor significantly more than the China paper, giving the print a somewhat distracting appearance. More importantly, however, is that a chine appliqué print is much more difficult to restore than a standard print. Any sort of immersion into water (which is often used in restoration) can lift the China paper off the backing and it is so thin that it can be difficult to reattach to the backing neatly. Chine appliqué prints can be restored, but only by a skilled conservator and there is definitely always the risk that the restoration will come out well. This doesn't mean one shouldn't buy a chine appliqué print with condition issues, but one must be aware of the risks.

"Proof" prints

What exactly does it mean when one says a print is a "proof." While the connotation of this term is clearly positive, it is not always clear what specifically it means. In the world of fine art prints the expression has a quite clear meaning. A proof is an impression of a print pulled prior to the regular, published edition of the print. Within this category there are a couple of sub-categories.

A trial or working proof is one taken before the design on the matrix (plate, lithographic stone or wood block) is finished. These proofs are pulled so that the artist can see what work still needs to be done to the matrix. The Otto Kuhler print above is a trail proof. Once a printed image meets the artist's expectations, this becomes a bon á trirer ("good to pull") proof, meaning that the artist has ok’d the matrix for printing.. This proof is often signed by the artist to indicate his approval and is used for comparison purposes by the printer.

An artist's proof is an impression issued extra to the regular numbered edition and reserved for the artist's own use. Artist's proofs are usually signed and are sometimes marked "A.P." (artist’s proof), "E.A." (Épreuve d'Artiste) or "H.C." (“Hors Commerce,” meaning outside the regular commercial run).

All this is well established, for with fine art prints there is usually a concern that the prints be run off exactly as the artist wants them and that the number of impressions be limited. In contrast, the meaning of “proof” is not nearly so clear for commercial prints. Commercial publishers realized that the positive connotation of the term meant that there was a financial advantage to offering so-called “proofs” for sale. Thus commercial publishers developed other types of proofs to offer to purchasers, generally at higher prices.

A proof before letters (Avant les lettres) is an impression of a print pulled before the title is added below the image. A scratched letter proof is an impression in which the title is lightly etched below the image. A signed proof is one where either the engraver or artist or both signed the print in the margin (that is, with a manuscript signature, not a printed one). The print of Lady Washington's Reception above is a signed proof before letters, with pencil signatures by both the artist and engraver. These are different ways in which publishers created "special" impressions of their prints, ones that were limited in number and so, in theory, worth more.

This is all fairly clear and there are examples of all these types of prints from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, the term “proof” ended up in the nineteenth century being used in a manner which essentially made it meaningless. One can find the term "Proof" on hundreds of examples of some prints, especially for the larger, steel engraved prints from the mid to late nineteenth-century. Indeed, for some of these prints we have found no examples without “Proof” engraved at the bottom. The print of Washington and Family above is one we always find with "Proof" printed in the bottom margin.

One assumes that the publishers of these prints did mean something by engraving “Proof” on these prints, but we have never figured out exactly what. It is obvious that the appearance of this label on the prints was meant as a sales tool, for the term has always been associated with limited numbers and higher value. However, so many prints have this term printed on them that “Proof” does not mean anything like the original meaning described above. It may be that these prints were intended to be “special” impressions issued in “limited” numbers, but certainly the numbers were not that limited nor are the prints really in any obvious way more "special" than the regular edition impressions (assuming there even was a regular edition).

So what does it mean when you find “Proof” in the margin of a mid to late nineteenth-century print? We get a queries about this all the time. The answer we have to give is “not much of anything.” We don't know what specific meaning this term was intended to have by the publishers (if anyone has ever seen anything from a publisher explaining their use of this term, I’d love to hear about it..), and it really doesn’t make any difference at all in price of these prints. I guess if there were two copies available of a print, one with "Proof" and one without, I'd pick the one with "Proof" on it if everything else was the same. However, if there were even a small difference in condition, I'd choose the print in better shape whether a "Proof" or not.

Nature Printing

In previous blogs I have described the three major types of printmaking processes: relief, intaglio and planographic. Today I will talk about an uncommon process, “nature printing.”

Nature printing is not a single process, but includes any printmaking procedure where actual natural specimens—such as a plant or insect— are used to make prints. The earliest known attempt at nature printing was by Leonardo da Vinci who printed images of plants by inking the plants and then pressing them by hand onto the paper. This process was used infrequently into the eighteenth century, but proved generally unsatisfactory because of the problems of getting uniform impressions and wear on the specimens, which limited the number of prints possible.

In the nineteenth century a new approach was tried, where the specimen was not used directly to make the print, but instead it was used to make a printing plate of wood or metal, from which the print was then made. The most practical process was developed in 1853 by Alois Auer in Vienna. It involved laying the item to be illustrated on top of a plate of soft lead. The specimen was then covered with a hard steel plate, and this sandwich was run through an intaglio printing press. The pressure forced the image of the specimen into the soft lead. The ink could then be applied to the lead plate and prints made from this. It was also possible to transfer the image to a copper plate by electrotyping and a reverse plate made from that for printing.

This process was most successfully used by Henry Bradbury, who used it to produce large nature prints for Ferns of Great Britain & Ireland in 1855 and The Nature-printed British Sea-weeds in 1859-60. These images are not only very decorative, but each print precisely and delicately traces the image of the plants, capturing the detail of nature itself almost “first hand.” Another interesting example of nature printing was Sherman F. Denton’s use in 1900 of actual butterfly wings to make the prints for As Nature Shows Them: Moths and Butterflies of the United States. Denton created the prints by pressing wings into the pages. He recorded that he had to collect over 50,000 insects in order to produce his work!

It is interesting that towards the end of the twentieth century there was a resurgence in interest in nature printing, resulting in the formation of the Nature Printing Society in 1976. You can read more about this society and nature printing on their web site.

The paper of old prints

In previous blogs I have looked at the subject matter which appears in old prints, as well as the processes used to make them. Another important aspect of old prints is the paper upon which the impressions are made, so today we’ll take a look at this subject.

Prints have been made on papyrus, vellum, silk and other materials, but the vast majority of antique prints are made on paper. The quality and content of the paper has varied considerably over the years. Until the nineteenth century, paper was almost exclusively made from rags (primarily cotton or linen) which were soaked and stirred in vats until the fibers separated into a pulpy mixture that could be used to make sheets of paper. In the nineteenth century, wood pulp paper was developed, which used wood fibers. The wood pulp was created either by mechanical means (first developed about 1840) or shortly thereafter by chemical processes.

Rag paper is still being made but today the majority of paper is made from wood pulp, which is easier and less expensive to produce. Rag paper, however, is significantly superior. The fabric fibers are longer than wood fibers, which makes rag paper stronger. Also, wood pulp paper is usually acidic, which causes it to deteriorate over time, and also it contains significant amounts of lignin, which reacts to light and oxygen by yellowing. Rag paper is naturally non-acidic and it will last without deterioration as long as it is properly handled. This is, of course, why prints that are hundreds of years old are frequently found on almost pristine paper, while prints that are less than a century old are often brown and brittle.

There were two general types of processes used to made the paper pulp into sheets of paper. The first process creates what is called “laid paper.” Laid paper is made by the paper pulp being poured into a mold made of a wooden framework with a wire mesh on the bottom. Laid paper was made by hand and the size of the sheets limited by the practical size of the wooden mold. The way that laid paper can be recognized is by the pattern that is impressed into the paper by the wire mesh. If you hold up a sheet of laid paper to the light, you can see the pattern of the wires (called chain lines), which usually will have very closely spaced lines with crossing lines at wider intervals.

The fact that the wire mesh makes a pattern in laid paper led paper makers to attach wire designs, such as crests, dates or intials, to the mesh. This creates a matching design in the paper, called a “watermark,” and this can be used to help determine the date or manufacturer of the paper used in a print. It should be noted, however, that fake chain lines and watermarks can be put into sheets that are not actually laid-paper.

The other main type of paper is “wove paper.” This is mechanically-made paper, where the pulp is formed into paper on a woven belt. Wove paper, therefore, lacks chain lines. Though wove paper was invented in the eighteenth century and laid paper is still produced today, as a rule of thumb it can be said that the majority of prints made prior to 1800 are on laid paper and the majority of prints made subsequently are on wove paper.

Often when talking about a print, a size description will be used. These can be fairly simple, as in “octavo,” “quarto,” or “folio,” or they can be more complex such as “16mo.,” “royal octavo,” “large quarto,” “double folio,” and other similarly confounding phrases. Unfortunately, there is no standard definition of the sizes of antique prints and this can lead to considerable confusion. You can, however, achieve some understanding of these size idioms by learning the origin of the expressions.

The phrases used to describe print sizes originally applied to bound volumes and have since been derivatively bestowed on prints. In the earliest days of printing, the largest volumes produced were made from single sheets of hand-made paper folded once, thus making two leaves, or four pages. These are called "folio" volumes, after the Latin folium, meaning leaf. Volumes made with sheets of paper folded twice, creating four leaves, are called "quarto"; those made with thrice folded paper, forming eight leaves, are called "octavo"; those made with sheets folded four times, producing 16 leaves, are called "16mo."; and so on. This sounds simple enough, except for the fact that the size of sheets of paper varied considerably, creating an equal variation in the size of a folio or quarto or octavo book. Indeed, some quarto volumes are actually be bigger than some folio volumes made from different sized paper.

These book terms have, by common use, been transferred to paper and thus to prints. A folio volume is made from sheets of paper folded once, so a folio print is half the size of a full sheet of paper, and likewise a quarto print is one quarter the size of a full sheet, an octavo print one eighth size, and so on. A print made from an unfolded sheet of paper is called a "double folio" print.

Many prints were made which do not fit neatly into these size categories. Not all prints were made from a sheet of paper to a particular fraction size, and other prints were made from rolls rather than from sheets of paper. Prints which were bound into books often vary in size because of the binders’ propensity to trim pages prior to gilding the ends, and of course there is the issue of different sizes of the sheets of paper. It is helpful that some paper sheets have names for their specific size, so that the prints made from these sheets can be unequivocally identified. For instance, the prints from John James Audubon’s The Birds of America are “double elephant-folio,” those from his work The Quadrupeds of North America are “imperial folio,” and those from the octavo editions of both works are “royal octavo.” Where there is no specific name for the sheets of paper used, general expressions such as "small folio," "medium quarto" or "large octavo" are sometimes used to give a more accurate description of size.

Understanding the history and nature of the paper used in making prints is important, but all these factors make this a fairly complex subject. There are the general rules of thumb, such as the fact that most prints made before 1800 will be on laid paper and most made afterwards on wove paper, but the best thing is to try to build as much experience looking at paper of prints where you know the history of the paper. An experienced dealer or collector can often give an approximate date for a print, or determine the originality of a print, by examining the paper and this is something which it is useful to try to learn for anyone interested in old prints.

Glass Transfer Painting

Today's post is by Kelli Lucas and it is about one of the more unusual types of antique "prints":


Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, printed paper was gobbled up as a consumer good. Cheaply made from inexpensive materials, prints of high and low quality were so ubiquitous in the early Atlantic world as to be nearly superfluous. Sometimes reduced to ephemera, prints nonetheless represented the highly refined crafts and technologies of engraving and printing images. Accessible in both material and subject, prints were the ideal form for manipulation and became fodder for authors of arts handbooks. As one such author, Robert Dossie, noted, glass transfer painting was such a simple endeavor that even those doubting their artistic abilities could attempt it with success.

Using readily-obtained art supplies and a commercially available engraving or mezzotint, one could easily mimic fashionable reverse-painted glass, utilizing a painting technique that bears some semblance to modern paint-by-number. After soaking an engraving for a few days (this step varies according to the instructor), the print was laid against the glass. Turpentine (or some variant medium) was then applied until the paper appeared transparent on the glass. Glass and paper were then left to dry, usually for more than one day. Once dry, the paper could be rubbed away with the fingertip, leaving only the transferred ink of the print. To complete the effect, the outlined and shaded design could be colored in with oil paints applied on the verso. Thus transformed, the print-cum-glass transfer painting could be suitably framed and displayed.

With greater detail and prose, Robert Dossie elaborates in Handmaid to the Arts (London: 1753):

Of the taking of mezzotinto prints on glass, and painting upon them with oil, or varnish colours.

The painting on glass, by means of mezzotinto prints, is performed by cementing the printed side of the prints to the surface of the glass, by the assistance of some glutinous body which will not dissolve in water; and then destroying the texture of the paper by water, so that it may be rubbed interely [sic] off from the cement upon the glass; leaving, at the same time, the whole of the ink of the print upon the cement, and glass, in the same manner as if the original impression had been made there; by which method, a complete drawing of the picture designed is obtained on the glass; and may be coloured by the use of oil, varnish, or water colours.

The method of preparing this is as follows.

Procure a piece of the best crown glass as near as possible in size to the print to be taken off; and varnish it thinly over with turpentine, rendered a little more fluid by the addition of oil of turpentine. Lay the print then on the glass beginning at one end; and pressing it gently down in every part in proceeding to the other: to prevent any vesicles of air being formed, in he laying it on, by the paper touching the cement unequally, in different parts; and to settle the whole more closely to the glass, it is well to pass over a wooden roller over it; which roller may be made of any kind of wood turned, and may be about two inches in diameter. Dry the glass, with the print thus laid upon it, at the fire, till the turpentine be perfectly hard; and afterwards moisten the paper well with water, till it be thoroughly soaked. Then rub off the paper intirely [sic] from the cement, by gently rolling it under the finger; and let it dry without any heat: the impression of the print will be found perfect on the glass; and may be painted over with either oil or varnish colours.

The choice and treatment of the colours for painting in this way upon glass, in either oil or varnish, my be the same as for any other method, and it is therefore needless to enumerate any further particulars….

[As quoted in Ann Massing, “From Print to Painting: The Technique of Glass Transfer Painting.” Print Quarterly, ed., David Landau. VI: 4: December 1989, 383-393.]

Dossie wrote largely to professional or would-be professional artisans, instructing them on a variety of technical issues, of which glass transfer painting was the simplest. But the ready availability of prints, sold in large numbers and for small prices, meant that they could exist as both finished product and raw material for the aesthetically-minded with leisure time and discretionary income. Accomplished women, especially, were expected to cultivate artistic abilities, including painting and drawing, as well as fine taste for art and style. Not unlike modern so-called “domestic goddesses,” these women were encouraged to use their time and talents to beautify their lives. From embroidery projects to drawing lessons, techniques were perfected in genteel homes to add beauty and refinement to the family environment. Glass transfer painting, which mimicked fashionable reverse-painted glass, was one pastime that retained popularity from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth.

As a process, glass transfer painting is fascinating, as it manipulates one material (paper) to produce something entirely other (glass). Amateur artists who worked with this process began with a finished objet d’art (that is, an engraving) and enhanced its properties, transforming it from ephemeral to substantial. Harder to cast aside and yet vastly more fragile, the engraving was made more precious by its transfer to glass, and more permanent. As pieces of paper, engravings and other prints have always been extremely fluid objects: they can easily be moved from one frame to another, or removed from a scrapbook to be tacked to a wall. For modern collectors and scholars, this ephemeral nature can be maddening: it is often difficult to find information on how prints were displayed and used within their period of production. But attaching a print to glass via transfer transformed the print from ephemera to object, an object that could be more easily preserved, collected, and studied over periods of time. Finding one such object today is a chance to learn about how prints were valued and which prints were particularly prized (presumably, one would not go to the trouble to make a glass transfer painting with an image one did not like).

In the last several years, our print shop has handled a small handful of such prints. One was a very fine image of George Washington, engraved by Jean Nicolas Laugier in 1839 after a painting by Léon Cogniet (which, itself, borrowed from Gilbert Stuart for Washington’s head). Its transformation from print to glass transfer painting illustrates a significant fashion in American culture: a penchant for images of George Washington. During his life and following his death, Washington was elevated to national symbol, and his image graced every possible object from water jugs to neckerchiefs. It is not surprising, then, that this particularly noble-looking portrait of the first president should be applied to glass, offering it a more permanent existence.

While we had the print in our shop, I took advantage of the opportunity to study it inside and out, hoping to learn more about the method itself. Looking on the back of the glass revealed a surface that reminded me of a modern paint-by-number picture. It reinforced Robert Dossie’s assertion that glass transfer painting was a practice that could be “very alluring,” as it allowed for “the production of pictures even without being able to draw” (Dossie, Preface, Handmaid to the Arts). The application of paint was done neatly, but without any great apparent skill.

The finished result, though, was quite impressive in its period frame. When imagined hanging over a fine Empire sideboard, with its polished brasses and gilt ornament, the picture looked sophisticated, indeed. We thoroughly enjoyed having it in the shop and look forward to finding other examples of this intriguing process.

Prints from 19th century illustrated newspapers.

Many nineteenth-century prints were “frameable” prints issued as separate sheets, and many others were published as parts of portfolios, books or magazines. One of the most common type of nineteenth-century print, however, is the wood engraved image from the illustrated newspapers that were published from the 1840s to the end of the century. These prints were issued in the tens of thousands and are fairly common in print shops, flea markets, bookshops, and at auctions. The fact that they were issued in newspapers and their relative lack of scarcity means that they are often dismissed by print collectors, but they are in fact wonderful antique prints the worth of which is obvious when one judges them for what they are, not for what they are not.

Newspapers illustrated with wood engravings became hugely popular beginning around the middle of the nineteenth century. The advent of these journals followed a number of developments which made it practical to produce a newspaper filled with illustrations. First, wood engraving was a relief process, so the images could be printed from the same presses, and even on the same page as typeface. Secondly, procedures were developed which made it quick and easy to go from a manuscript drawing to a print, and then steel facing allowed for the production of thousands of images from the engraved woodblocks.

The first of this type of newspaper was The Illustrated London News, founded in 1842, and the first American illustrated newspaper was Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, founded in 1851, its name changed to Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion in 1855. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper appeared in 1855, followed two years later by the most successful of all the American illustrated newspapers, Harper’s Weekly. Many other illustrated newspapers appeared in different countries and an article in The Graphic (London), December 6, 1890, depicted the mast heads of twenty-three illustrated newspapers from around the world.

The success of these newspapers lay in their illustrations. These images were wide-ranging in their coverage of events, places, things and persons of interest to the readers, and they were extremely timely in their appearance, often being issued within two weeks of when the images were first drawn. Readers found it new and exciting to be able to have, within days and at an affordable price, a first-hand view of a disaster from across the country, to gaze on an image of a just constructed bridge, or to see contemporary pictures of far-away cities or countries.

The prints produced in the nineteenth-century illustrated newspapers were comprehensive in subject and ubiquitous, with the most successful weeklies having press runs of well over 100,000 for each issue. The fact that these prints were “merely” illustrations in a newspaper and were issued in huge numbers has led some to dismiss them as unworthy of study or ownership. This is a real mistake.


The quality of the engraving is generally very good and many of the drawings were by skilled artists. For some important American artists, illustrated newspapers gave them a start on their careers and many of their important images were published in this format. Artists such as Theodor R. Davis, F.O.C. Darley, Charles Graham, A.B. Frost, and Frederic Remington all produced fine images which were intended to be produced as illustrations for newspapers. Thomas Nast is one of the most influential American artists of the century, both for his prototype images of Santa Claus, but also for political cartoons, which not only created the classic symbols of the Democratic and Republication parties—-the donkey and the elephant-—but also had a huge impact on the politics of his time-—Nast's political cartoons in Harper's are credited with helping to bring down “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall.

Another figure who produced an important body of illustrated newspaper prints was Winslow Homer. Like Thomas Nast, Homer gained his early experience as a Harper's staff artist working on the Civil War battlefield. He then went on to produce a series of classic images of American life in the 1860s and 1870s. These prints were not simply copies of paintings, but were images originally drawn by Homer specifically to appear as wood engraved illustrations in Harper’s Weekly. These are “original Winslow Homer” prints, which while more expensive than most other newspaper illustrations, are still very affordable.

Beyond the artistic quality of the prints that appeared in these newspapers, they are also important because they often are the most accurate and current images done of their subjects, and in some cases these are the only contemporary images of the people, buildings, and events depicted. There were often separately issued prints of the most famous individuals, the most spectacular disasters, the most substantial new structures, the most significant political events, and the most populous cities, but there were thousands of people, events, structures, towns and cities for which illustrated newspaper prints were the only contemporary images ever done.

One area of particular interest to me are images of sports such as baseball, football, cricket, polo, rowing, and tennis in the earliest days of their development. With very few exceptions, there are no separately issued prints of these sports from before about the turn of the century. However, illustrated newspapers were filled with such images. Like Homer's prints, the sports prints from the newspapers tend to sell for more than other subjects, but they still are both affordable and some of the earliest images one can own of these sports.

Our understanding of nineteenth century America would be far poorer without the existence of the prints from illustrated newspapers. Though in the past often dismissed by scholars, they are now being appreciated for their documentary importance and more and more print references on particular topics (such as my recent publication, Panorama of Pittsburgh , on nineteenth-century views of Pittsburgh) are taking these prints into account. Also, whatever subject from this period one is interested in, there is likely to be at least a few reasonably priced images one can find. These are thus images that print collectors should be aware of and they can be wonderful and affordable prints to add to ones collection.

Two excellent sources of information on these newspapers are Frank L. Mott’s A History of American Magazines, Vol. II, 1850-1865 (Cambridge, MA, 1967) and David Tatham’s Winslow Homer and the Illustrated Book (Syracuse, 1992).

Numbered prints

There is a lot of confusion over what it means to have a “numbered” print, so I will discuss the issue in today’s blog. What people usually mean when they say that a print is numbered, is that the artist or printer or publisher has indicated that the print in question was the Xth print out of a total of YY made. This is usually indicated with a pencil notation in the margin in the form X/YY.

So, for instance, if Thomas Willoughby Nason produced a total of only 200 impressions of his print of “Upland Pastures,” then he would mark the fifth print that he pulled from the woodblock as “5/200” and the eighty-ninth he pulled off the block as “89/200” and so on. This was intended as an indication to a potential buyer that there was only a limited number of these prints made (200) and that this one was one of the official group (number 89).

It is important to realize that this numbering is really only a marketing stratagem, not something that has anything to do with the intrinsic quality or value of the print. Artists numbered prints simply so that buyers would know that the run was limited and that their print was one of the official run. The presence of numbering does not in itself make the print any more or less valuable, it just allows us to have knowledge of a couple of important facts about the print.

It is, however, quite clear that for prints by artists who did number their prints (and there are many who didn’t), it is important to have the number on the print, for that does tell us those important facts. While it is true that if Nason did not number his prints they would still be just as valuable, for those prints he did number, you want to make sure you have an impression with the numbering. Where a particular print was numbered by the artist, any impression without a number is probably one that is a reproduction or a later restrike, not from the original series, and that of course means that impression has considerably less value.

There a number of reasons why prints are not numbered. First off, numbering of a print is a relatively modern notion. It was only in the late nineteenth century, with the etching revival, that prints began to be numbered. Before that time there was no need to number prints---all prints were run off in limited numbers. Printing processes were such that huge runs of prints could not be made and also there wasn’t a large enough market that anyone would run off more than a relatively limited number of impressions. Before the mid-nineteenth century, no one worried about there being a huge number of impressions of any print, so why would anyone bother to number theirs? It is much like how now-a-days television broadcasts from around the world often are noted as being either “Live” or “Recorded earlier.” Fifty years ago, no television broadcast of an event from overseas could be shown live, so no one would have thought to bother to label a broadcast as “Recorded earlier.” Likewise, before the later nineteenth century, no printmakers would have thought of numbering their prints.

A second reason many prints are not numbered is that the numbering of prints is really limited to “fine art” prints that were intended to be marketed to discerning collectors who cared about such things. Most prints, as discussed in an earlier blog, are commercial prints that were not aimed at a collectors market and for those prints there was no reason to bother to number them. Most of these prints were, of course, issued in far greater number than the fine art prints which were numbered, but some of these are very rare today and, as discussed earlier, scarcity is not that important a factor in the value of most of these prints.

Finally, many modern, fine art printmakers just didn’t bother to number their prints. This could be for a number of reasons, such as the possibility they didn’t want to limit how many impressions they could run off, or they didn’t feel that it would help sell their prints, or whatever. Many modern prints are official impressions from a limited series even though they lack numbering. What is important for those who are purchasing modern, fine art prints is that you know whether the series in question was numbered. If you are looking at a print from a series that was never numbered, then the absence of a number means nothing, but if the series was numbered and the one you are looking at does not have one, you should either avoid that print or make sure you are paying only an appropriate price for such an impression.

The discussion above refers only to numbered prints in the usual sense of an indication that a particular print is impression X out of YY made. Many antique prints have just a single number of them, and one of the most common queries we get on our web site or at Antiques Roadshow is what this type of number means. Are these “numbered prints?” No; these are not what is usually considered a numbered print. These single numbers which appear on prints are what is called “stock” or “catalog” numbers, for they are the number of the print in a stock list or a print catalog issued by the printmaker. The same stock number appears on every example of that print. This number was used so that if you are a framer or printseller and you want to order prints from the publisher, you just put in an order for print #26 or three copies of #12 and two of #48, and so on.

A stock or catalog number is typically a single number that appears on the print, usually somewhere along the bottom. These numbers appear on quite a number of the mid-nineteenth century prints by publishers such as Currier & Ives or the Kelloggs, and also on many of the later decorative prints from the late 19th or early 20th century, by such publishers as J. Hoover & Sons. This means nothing about the print other than at one time it was listed in a stock list or catalog and identified by the publisher with the number. It adds no value to the print and is unrelated to the fine art “numbered prints” discussed above.

Chromolithography

Today’s blog is about chromolithography. (more on other print types here) Chromolithography is a type of lithography, but in many ways it is a very different printmaking process. Chromolithographs are among my favorite types of prints, so I must apologize that this blog will be rather long-winded…

Strictly speaking, a chromolithograph is a colored image printed by many applications of lithographic stones, each using a different color ink (if only one or two tint stones are used, the print is called a “tinted lithograph”). The advantage of chromolithography, of course, is that this allows the production of colored prints without the cost, time, and risk of hand coloring. The skillful use of chromolithography allowed for the creation of images with every imaginable color and with an appearance that sometimes closely copied that of original watercolors and oil paintings.

The wide-spread use of chromolithography in America began following the Civil War, and in the next half decade millions of chromolithographs were made and sold throughout the country. These prints became a customary decoration in homes everywhere, and indeed the last half of the nineteenth century has been called the period of “chromo civilization” in America. At the end of the century and into the early twentieth century, chromolithography was primarily used to create “cheap and cheerful” colored images, and these inexpensive and simple prints created a bad name for this process, giving “chromos” a reputation as the poor man’s prints.

It is true that one of the main attractions of chromolithography was that it allowed for the inexpensive production of thousands of color prints, which brought bright and attractive images within the reach of the masses. However, chromolithographs were much more than this. Many chromolithographs were elaborately made, using upwards of 20 or more stones to create a rich and sophisticated image. Many chromolithographs were intended to duplicate watercolors and paintings, allowing the middle class to hang “art” in their home at an affordable price. At the same time, many artists used chromolithography to create prints that very closely followed their artistic vision and which allowed them to earn significantly more income than they could from selling just their original watercolors and paintings.

Chromolithographs were one of the most important artistic elements in the life of many Americans in the later nineteenth century, with published guides lecturing homeowners on the virtues of chromolithography and encouraging the use of these prints for the decoration of the home and education of the family. I think that chromolithographs have been too much neglected and unappreciated, and we are on a campaign to correct this by featuring these important prints at antique shows, having an entire section on the subject on our web site, and I have often promoted these prints on Antiques Roadshow.


Though something of a simplification, one can group chromolithographs into three basic types. First are the chromos used primarily as book illustrations or inexpensive "art." These can run from very fine quality (such as Owen’s Grammar of Ornament) to colorful, workmanlike images (such as late nineteenth century natural history book illustrations) to “cheap and cheerful” (like the many inexpensive prints intended for framing from the 1890s). Generally these chromolithographs were printed in the thousands and so are generally available today at reasonable prices. While not really “fine art” nor “collectible,” these can provide very nice prints for decoration.

The second type are sometimes called “French style” chromolithographs. These are prints which are intended to duplicate watercolors or paintings using translucent inks which create an image that has an airy texture and a soft blending of colors. This process can create lovely images which often look much like the original artwork.

This type of print became very popular with artists in the 1880s and 90s. In this period a number of series of this type of chromolithograph were published with prints of sporting images by American artists, intended for framing and designed to help generate income for the artists and publishers. Among the most famous of these series are Alexander Pope’s Upland Game Birds and Water Fowl of the United States, Frederic Cozzens’s American Yachts, Their Clubs and Races, A.B. Frost’s Shooting Pictures, and the portfolio Sport, or Fishing and Shooting, with prints by a number of important American sporting artists.

These prints could be kept as a “book,” but really they were issued mostly in portfolios (loose prints with covers) rather than bound as books. The primary intent was for these prints to be framed and that is how most of them survive to today. These prints sometimes were issued with titles printed on them, but more often the prints were published with the paper trimmed to the images, with any title on the cover or a separate label. These prints were intended to be framed so that they looked like original paintings or watercolors and they can still be used to that end. [ Click here to see an Antiques Roadshow appraisal of prints from A.B. Frost's sporting portfolio ]

The final type of chromolithograph is my favorite. These are prints that were intended to duplicate oil paintings (sometimes called the "German style'). The inks used were heavy, oil-based inks which when applied in several layers give a texture like that of an original oil painting. These prints were almost never printed with any text on them (though sometimes the title or a name might appear unobtrusively at the bottom of the image), they were usually issued with no margins, and often mounted either on a canvas backing or a board. They were also almost always sold in a frame (sometimes quite elaborate) without glass. Altogether this makes their appearance very close to that of an oil painting.

These prints are the ones that were designed to be sold to the middle classes so that they could hang these faux paintings in their home and benefit both from their sophisticated look and from being able to enjoy and learn from the artwork. Many fine paintings by American artists were issued in this format, such as Frederick Church’s Niagara Falls, Albert Bierstadt’s Sunset & Sunlight and Shadows, Jasper F. Cropsey’s American Autumn, and Thomas Moran’s Grand Canyon of Arizona. It was as much through the chromolithographic copies of these and other seminal American paintings, as opposed to the exhibition of the original work, that this art was disseminated to the general public.

The leading proponent of this sort of chromolithograph was Louis Prang of Boston. Prang's chromos, which were "sold in all Picture stores," were highly praised and became hugely successful. Prang did more to create the market for chromolithographs in America than any other publisher, and his work also greatly shaped the output of other publishers around the country.

Prang's initial success came from his many small prints ("art bits"), which were collected by the public and usually kept in albums. He also developed a market for color printed specialty items like Christmas cards, which he is credited with inventing. Beginning in the late 1860s, Prang launched a magazine, Prang's Chromo: A Journal of Popular Art, and he began to issue chromolithographic copies of American paintings, which he called "Prang's American Chromos." He later expanded his output to include European paintings such as Correggio’s Magdalena. His first great success was with Eastman Johnson's Barefoot Boy, and eventually he issued about 800 chromolithographs of this sort, establishing an oeuvre unmatched by any other American chromolithographic publisher.

There were other publishers who issued these oil-like chromolithographs, such as Charles H. Crosby, Colton, Zahm and Roberts, F. Tuchfarber, and the British firm of Thomas McLean. And there were also many firms which issued other types of chromolithographs, ranging in quality from poor to top notch. We try to carry in our shop as many chromolithographs as we can, both images by important American artists and charming anonymous genre prints. It is interesting that when we hang a good quality art chromolithograph in our booth at an antique show, it is not infrequently mistaken for an oil painting (as, of course, was the original intent). What is sad is that when I explain that no, this is not an oil painting, but instead it is a fabulous example of chromolithography, the viewer often loses interest. To me, the chromolithographs are as interesting and attractive as the oil paintings, and certainly are more affordable.

I’ll keep beating the drum for chromolithographs and hope an appreciation of these fine prints will spread. Towards that end, there are some excellent reference books that one can read on these prints. The seminal work, and the one which really began the renaissance in appreciation of chromolithographs, is Peter C. Marzio’s terrific The Democratic Art . Katharine M. McClinton’s fine The Chromolithographs of Louis Prang and Jay Last’s The Color Explosion are also books anyone interested in the subject should read.

Lithographic prints

In previous blogs, I talked about two types of original prints, relief prints and intaglio prints. Today I'll talk about the third major type of original print, planographic prints.

Whereas a relief print has its image printed from a raised surface, and an intaglio print has its image printed from a recessed image, a planographic print has its image printed from a flat surface. Because the matrix is not physically modified to hold the ink, the process depends upon a chemical reaction. For antique prints, the only planographic original prints are lithographs.

A lithograph is created by drawing an image onto a stone (lithography = “stone-drawing”) or metal plate using a grease crayon or a greasy ink called tusche. The process is based on the principle that grease and water do not mix. To create a lithograph, the stone or plate is washed with water--which is repelled by the crayon--and then with ink--which is absorbed by the crayon. The image is printed onto the paper from the stone or plate, which can be re-inked many times without wear.

As the process is planographic, no platemark is created when a lithograph is printed. While zinc plates were used late in the nineteenth century, most antique lithographs are printed from Bavarian limestone (other types of limestone were tried, but that from Bavaria works the best). The tuche holds to the stone in a pattern that follows the grain of the stone, so an examination of a lithographic image under magnification shows that stone grain (this is the way one can distinguish an original lithograph from a collotype, which is a planographic process but shows the pattern of the photographic gelatin used to create the image).

Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in 1798 but didn’t come into general use until the 1820s. After that time lithography quickly replaced intaglio processes for most illustrative and commercial applications, for the design was easier to apply to the stone or plate, it was much easier to rework or correct a design, and many more images could be produced without loss of quality than in any of the intaglio processes.

Most lithographs are printed with a black or sepia ink, and many were issued that are hand colored. A tinted lithograph is a lithograph whose image is printed from one stone and which has wash color for tinting applied from one or two other stones. Sometimes, hand highlight color is added to a tinted lithograph. A chromolithograph is a colored lithograph, with at least three colors, in which each color is printed from a separate stone and where the image is composed from those colors. I'll post a blog specifically on chromolithographs in the near future.

(Feel free to browse here for more information on Famous Lithographers)