In Printing Colour 1400–1700, Ad Stijnman and Elizabeth Savage offer the first handbook of early modern colour printmaking before 1700 (when most such histories begin), creating a new, interdisciplinary paradigm for the history of graphic art. It unveils a corpus of thousands of individual colour prints from across early modern Europe, proposing art historical, bibliographical, technical and scientific contexts for understanding them and their markets. The twenty-three contributions represent the state of research in this still-emerging field. From the first known attempts in the West until the invention of the approach we still use today (blue-red-yellow-black/‘key’, now CMYK), it demonstrates that colour prints were not rare outliers, but essential components of many early modern book, print and visual cultures.
Digital technology produced astonishing advances in prepress productivity, unleashing many creative possibilities and image quality improvements. Progress in printing technologies also raised color quality and productivity. Today's subsequent availability of inexpensive, high-quality color images, has greatly enriched us all. Author Gary G. Field's account of modern color printing's evolution has four areas of emphasis: The Photomechanical Era The Electronic Imaging Upheaval Color Printing's Progress The Art-Technology Partnership Sections at the end of key chapters include image structure enlargements from representative color prints. These show how different structural elements and their configuration contributed to quality refinement over the years. Appendices explain the nature of print quality and the tradeoffs often made between one facet of quality and another. This book is intended for the technically-curious reader. Graphic arts personnel, color imaging scientists and engineers, historians of technology and amateur producers of color prints will find much to delight, entertain, and perhaps inspire. Published by The Graphic Communication Institute at Cal Poly and distributed by RIT Press.
This richly illustrated publication reproduces and describes effectively every early modern German color print held at the British Museum. It is one of the world's most significant collections of these rare milestones of cultural heritage and technology. New photography reveals 150 impressions in jaw-dropping detail, most life-size. Some have never been seen in public or reproduced. It is the first major study of the first wave of German color printing. It spans medieval printing in the late 1400s through the Renaissance and Reformation of the 1500s. Early Colour Printing features masterpieces by leading figures like Erhard Ratdolt, Lucas Cranach, Hans Baldung Grien, and Hans Burgkmair, as well as unfairly overlooked entrepreneurs and innovators like Erasmus Loy (and his daughter Anna). Their breakthroughs reproduced artworks and simplified astronomical calculations. They created trends in interior design and signalled 'red-letter days'. They helped musicians sight-read and they color-coded metals for goldsmiths. These diverse new functions and markets might seem unrelated. But they are connected, and they cannot be understood in isolation. From artworks to missals, icons to wallpapers, this book breaks new ground by revealing the fascinating underlying technologies that enabled the production of these color-printed objects. The many inventions of color printing in the German-speaking lands began with medieval novel solutions. They were devised long before color printing inks could be formulated. Then, color printing techniques transformed how printed material could be used during the technological and cultural revolutions of the sixteenth century. Later designers and artists around Europe celebrated these techniques' heritage for centuries, from the 'D rer Renaissance' until chromolithography revolutionized the print market in the nineteenth century. Early Colour Printing captures this story in rich detail. It sets the stage for second wave of German color woodcut, which was triggered by the Expressionist revival at the turn of the twentieth century. Thoroughly researched and engagingly written, this collection guide will be a standard reference on German graphic art, early modern visual culture, and the history of printing itself. Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum offers significant new research, including previously unidentified examples of early modern color-printing. Some are believed to be unique in the world; others were made decades before the landmark invention of colorful chiaroscuro woodcut in Italy in 1516. By modeling a printer- and technology-based approach to the history of printing, it contributes to scholarship by pinpointing attributions to printers--not just to artists or designers. In doing so, it lays the groundwork for a new understanding of the history of print, one that encompasses all forms of printed material. This publication derives from an exhibition at the British Museum curated by Elizabeth Savage.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Invention of Lithography" by Alois Senefelder. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
Relief printing : woodcut, metal type, and wood engraving -- Intaglio and planographic printing : engraving, etching, mezzotint, and lithography -- Color printing : hand coloring and multiple-impression color -- Bits and pieces : modern art prints, oddities, and photographic precursors -- Early photography in silver : daguerreotypes, early silver paper processes and tintypes -- Non-silver processes : carbon, blueprint, platinum, and a couple of others -- Modern photography : developing-out gelatin silver printing -- Color notes : primary colors and neutrality -- Color photography : separation-based processes and chromogenic prints -- Photography in ink : relief and intaglio printing : the letterpress halftone and gravure printing -- Photography in ink : planographic printing : collotype and photo offset lithography -- Digital processes : binary issues, inkjet, dye sublimation, and digital C-prints -- Where do we go from here? : some questions about the future
Using extensive research and interviews with many of the surviving Technicolor technicians, the history of dye printing and the events leading to its demise are fully covered. (The Beijing Film Laboratory is the only facility currently using the process.) Included are diagrams of how the process worked and an extensive listing of U.S. feature films printed with it.
A History of Screen Printing How an Art Evolved into an Industry, the book chronicles the rapid advancements in the ancient art of stenciling that took place during the late 1800s, and how it turned into screen printing as we know it today. With help from the families of the pioneers, industry supporters and over 15 years of research, author Guido Lengwiler has rescued an almost lost history that covers the period up to and including WWII. It tells the interconnected stories of how a relatively small group of people, many of them artists, signwriters, and entrepreneurs working in the dawn of the advertising age in the USA, helped create entire industries that continue to exist globally today, all using screen printing in the production of an unbelievably wide range of products. It includes beautiful full color illustrations from the Selectasine Booklet provided to original patent licensees, and the main vehicle that spread the process around the world. Hundreds of never before seen product photos, machine designs, and some of the first art prints done in the 1920 s in California are included, plus special chapters on fine art printmaking, along with the ceramic and textile industries. Screen printing was a hybrid process that provided both graphic and manufacturing advantages over other methods, and was perfect for the times. Industry, especially in the USA, was transitioning from hand craft into mass production, creating a need to decorate products, or advertise them with signage. Most times a closely guarded industrial secret, screen printing bridged gaps between hand production and the more expensive automated printing of the time, which included lithography and letterpress. It introduced cheap short run color capabilities, and virtually created the whole Point of Purchase (POP) and Specialty Advertising industries, along with the billboard and t-shirt printing sectors. An ability to print directly on a wide variety of materials led to use decorating metal, ceramics, textiles, and plastics, spurring record growth, better designs, and lowered costs in any industry that adopted it, from fashion to fine china. Experiments prior to WWII led to printed circuits, which in turn revolutionized the electronics industries. All these and more are legacies of the pioneers of screen printing featured in the book. The history of the process is really the history of so many things we take for granted in today s and tomorrow s society.
A beautifully illustrated visual and cultural history of the color blue throughout the ages Blue has had a long and topsy-turvy history in the Western world. The ancient Greeks scorned it as ugly and barbaric, but most Americans and Europeans now cite it as their favorite color. In this fascinating history, the renowned medievalist Michel Pastoureau traces the changing meanings of blue from its rare appearance in prehistoric art to its international ubiquity today. Any history of color is, above all, a social history. Pastoureau investigates how the ever-changing role of blue in society has been reflected in manuscripts, stained glass, heraldry, clothing, paintings, and popular culture. Beginning with the almost total absence of blue from ancient Western art and language, the story moves to medieval Europe. As people began to associate blue with the Virgin Mary, the color became a powerful element in church decoration and symbolism. Blue gained new favor as a royal color in the twelfth century and became a formidable political and military force during the French Revolution. As blue triumphed in the modern era, new shades were created and blue became the color of romance and the blues. Finally, Pastoureau follows blue into contemporary times, when military clothing gave way to the everyday uniform of blue jeans and blue became the universal and unifying color of the Earth as seen from space. Beautifully illustrated, Blue tells the intriguing story of our favorite color and the cultures that have hated it, loved it, and made it essential to some of our greatest works of art.
