G.C.Ritter Von Max 1840- 1915
Woodburytype
1864 - c.1900
This was a photo-mechanical process. Just like the carbon process, ( I will talk about the next blog ) the Woodburytype process produced prints that did not fade because the images did not rely on light-sensitive materials.
The images were, in fact, made up entirely of stable pigment suspended in gelatine.
The Woodburytype process produced a very high quality of final image, but it was not an easy process to use.
... the gelatin relief is impressed into a lead plate, thus creating a mold relief that is virtually identical to the gelatin relief. The lead mold is filled with a warm pigmented gelatin and a sheet of paper is laid on the mold and closed in a bookbinder"s press. When dry the sheet is removed and the prints are trimmed, as there is always extra gelatin that has squeezed out around the edges. Thus Woodburytypes are always trimmed and mounted.
Were often pasted into books as illustrations.
... an early member of the Photographic Society of Scotland in the 1850s wrote, twenty years later, to the British Journal of Photography.
His letter began:
"There are three processes which are supposed to be permanent, namely the heliotype, the Woodbury and the autotype. The two former are quite out of the question: they require expensive and bulky machinery, attended with an amount of difficult manipulations which amateurs are not likely to encounter"
"The autotype is more hopeful, but until it is made cheaper and a good deal easier to work, I do not think it will be generally adopted."
"For the present amateurs must be satisfied with silver printing; and, speaking from a very long experience, I take a much more cheerful view of the permanence of silver prints than most people do. These pictures have got a bad name; but it has arisen from a cause which is not difficult to explain."
"We live in times when, owing to competition, cheapness is much more thought of than good quality; and this has forced professional photographers to send out prints which they know are not half washed, and which they equally well know must fade in a few years."
" ... ... I am satisfied that if amateurs (I address this communication entirely to them) are content to print a small number of pictures at a time - say half-a dozen - to put some carbonate of ammonia in the hypo fixing bath (for which there is a good chemical reason), and then expose them for three or four hours to a continuous stream of water, always changed by means of a syphon, most of their prints will be blooming long after the greater number of my amateur friends have faded away for ever."
14 July 1876
Charles Robert Darwin's portraits , 1809-1882, naturalist, co-discoverer of the theory of evolution and author of the world-changing book, "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection", first published in 1859.
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