From Naughty Girl’s and Boy’s Magic Transformations (McLoughlin Brothers, ca. 1880).
On the Friday afternoon before the conference started, there was a special treat prepared by Jane Rodgers Siegel, Columbia University’s Librarian for Rare Books (and also one of the conference presenters). In the Rare Book & Manuscript Library on the sixth floor of Columbia’s Butler Library she laid out examples of books encapsulating the history of color printing from the fifteenth through the early twentieth centuries, and illustrating topics from many of the conference presentations. [Read more]
CMYK+W print heads for the large format WireJet printer. (Removed from printer carriage for cleaning)
On Sunday after the conference, a group of nearly twenty people visited Ribuoli Digital a fine art digital and traditional print and fabrication studio for artists and photographers located in the far west of Chelsea. Proprietors Andre Ribuoli and Jennifer Mahlman-Ribuoli showed prints and machines for reproducing artwork and creating new artwork. Ribuoli started doing their own artwork and have since begun working as jobbers for other artists (some quite well-known). [Read more]
Extreme halftone close-up from John Hilgart’s Four Color Process Blog.
Twenty-first century comic book aficionados have a feast of media choices at their disposal: glossy offset-printed comics on bright white paper, special wrappers, and even digital distribution through vendors like comiXology. So why would they even deign to taint their eyes by reading off-register comics with low resolution and limited tonal range halftone screens on dingy newsprint? [Read more]
Everyone loves the Page chromatic type specimen (1874), but it seems that no one loves it more than Nick Sherman, a digital type guy by day, who shared some of the discoveries he’s made while obsessing about the book. Sherman’s images of specimen pages, bringing oohs and ahhs from the audience, prompted him to admit that turning each page is “like getting punched in the face over and over.” [Read more]
Building on continued research into the history of children’s books and illustration, as well as her recent blog post, Laura Wasowicz presented her paper “McLoughlin Brothers: Innovators of the Nineteenth-Century Picture Book” using the illustration history of Cinderella as a case study to demonstrate the changes in the technology of color illustration and the consumption of children’s literature. [Read more]
In my book The Rise and Fall of the Printers’ International Specimen Exchange(Oak Knoll Press, 2012), I showed in 4-color-process a specimen of two color analyses from Volume IX of the Exchange: one of the stars, the other of alkali and alkaline earth metals. Only the first three volumes of the Exchange included notes on the specimens; details about later specimens were difficult to come by, and for most of those I listed only contributor names as they appeared in the volumes. [Read more]
The Kelmscott/Goudy Press, the Albion iron hand press No. 6551 once owned by William Morris in England and Frederic W. Goudy in New York, will be auctioned by Christie’s on December 6 in New York City. [Read more]
Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, etc. Manufactured by Wm. H. Page & Co., Greeneville, Conn. : The Co., 1874. 655.241 P133sp
Rob Roy Kelly wrote that Wm. H. Page’s Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, Etc., 1874 “has been rightfully acclaimed as containing the most superb wood type specimens ever printed.” This tome of 100 plates featured Page’s fantastic character designs, intricate borders and tint blocks, precisely printed in up to 7 colors each—sometimes with metallic inks, and always with interesting overprinted hues. About a dozen copies exist in libraries nationwide, and it is this rarity that encouraged curators at RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection to have RIT’s copy digitally photographed. [Read more]
The 2013 Lieberman Lecture was delivered in San Francisco on July 20 by David Pankow, who has recently retired from all his many duties at Rochester Institute of Technology. The well-attended lecture was co-sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library and was held in the Koret Auditorium. John McBride and Kathleen Burch made all the arrangements on behalf of the Northern California Chapter. [Read more]
