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Kat Barnett
16th August 2012, 11:51 AM
I've been buying things on that online auction site again. This is my latest purchase. It's copper, has some lovely scratches and is mounted on a wood block. The image looks like a negative photograph.

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b223/whippetwoman/The%20Contents%20of%20my%20Sketch%20Book%20and%20m ore/mysterywoman.jpg?t=1345115829http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b223/whippetwoman/The%20Contents%20of%20my%20Sketch%20Book%20and%20m ore/Mysterywoman-1.jpg?t=1345115694

The image on the left is actually a scanned image which has inverted the picture with the light reflecting against the highly polished areas of the surface. (Does that make sense?) On the right is a more accurate picture of what it looks like. I know I promised not to ask stoopid questions but I was wondering if you know what this is? A photogravure plate?

CornishPaul
16th August 2012, 02:44 PM
I'm pretty sure that what you have is a Photogravure plate, sometimes the image can consist of very fine dots if a "hard dot " screen has been used in the process. I think photogravure became widely used around the 1880s-90s as a means of mass producing reproductions of photographs that wouldn't fade. Yours looks like it dates from around the early 1900s. I think that it was Fox talbot that invented and patented the technique. The resulting image is not really a true photograph but would be classed as an intaglio print.

AlanJones
19th August 2012, 04:13 AM
You are in luck, I can tell you exactly what it is as my family were printers.

It is a copper letterpress printing plate and looks to go back to about the 1900's to WW1. I see you have two, perhaps there should be four. If it was full colour, it would need to go through the press four times: Magenta - Yellow - Cyan and finally Black for highlight/shaddow detail. The wooden mounting is to bring it up to type-high and should measure 0.918" from the base to the top which accepts the printing ink. As a rough guide, an old shilling coin is 0.915" which we used to use to set the machine inking rollers for type high. In more recent times, zinc and aluminium were used in place of copper.

It is most definately not gravure which is a mainly engraved image on a rotary steel plate. If you are in London it is possible to see the gravure cylinder plates used to print the Queen's face and other details on our banknotes in the basement museum of the Bank of England, Threadneedle Street.

AlanJones
19th August 2012, 05:00 AM
]You are in luck, I can tell you exactly what it is as my family were printers.

It is a copper letterpress printing plate and looks to go back to about the 1900's to WW1. I see you have two, perhaps there should be four. If it was full colour, it would need to go through the press four times: Magenta - Yellow - Cyan and finally Black for highlight/shaddow detail. It was customary to stamp colour information in the margins used for nail mounting as to the colour to be used. The wooden mounting is to bring it up to type-high and should measure 0.918" from the base to the top which accepts the printing ink. As a rough guide, an old shilling coin is 0.915" which we used to use to set the machine inking rollers for type high. In more recent times, zinc and aluminium were used in place of copper.

I was thinking of something else, but I confirm it is a photogravure block. Rotogravure is another printing process used in banknote and financial securities printing and is a rare process.

Paulographic
19th August 2012, 06:52 AM
This doesn't look like part of a four-colour set.
It'll be a B+W only plate maybe for insertion into a womens magazine.

AlanJones
21st August 2012, 11:31 AM
This doesn't look like part of a four-colour set.
It'll be a B+W only plate maybe for insertion into a womens magazine.

Why make a copper printing block as a negative, and for use in a publication like a womans' mag? I see no point as it would not be published unless it was going in a text book for trainee printers! What are we dealing with here, ladies fashion circa 1910 or a training aid from the same period?

I think it would also be too early as a duo-tone, where two of the process colours were use. In my opinion these were never really successful or even satisfactory. When I was involved in print, we never used them, but they were touched on at college. There has to be a couple more floating around.