Pictures To Print : The nineteenth-century engraving trade

Farrand Press, London, first edition, 1984. Cloth, 4to,. xxx, ,234 pp, ills, facs, 1 map. From the publisher's advertisement: "This book, at once lively and scholarly, chronicles a remarkable period in the history of painting and the making of related prints. Artistic endeavour, commercial enterprise, and scientific invention combined in nineteenth-century Britain to launch a vigorous trade in beautiful reproductive engravings. Of course, engraving and printing skills were not new; but, from c.1830 to 1880, these established hand techniques flowered as never before or since.. Anthony Dyson's work on the records of Thomas Ross & Son (established in 1833 as Dixon & Ross) is well known to historians of printing and of nineteenth-century British art. His years of research have now culminated in a book, broader, fuller, and with room for the wider excursions denied by the leamed paper. Engraving and printing techniques, paper and ink, and other materials and equipment are discussed and analysed, and to these are added accounts of the publishers and their trade, of inventions, working methods, and developments both commercial and artistic. The work deals mainly with the trade in Britain, but draws too on business in Europe, whence many prints were imported and where, particularly later in the nineteenth century, some British publishers recruited engravers. A lively export trade back to the Continent, to America, and to the Empire is also traced. This book is indispensable for historians of the nineteenth-century British art and for historians of printing." Contents include: Preface; Introductìon; Prints for the Million - 1 The Plate-Printer and Expanding Trade; 2 Collaboration and Competition; 3 Engravers and their eamings; A Process of Difficult Management - 4 Plate-Printers Workshops and their Equipment; 5 The Rolling-Press; 6 The Engraving and Printing of Copper and Steel Plates; 7 Inks, Inking, Colour-Printing and Print Colouring; 8 Paper for Plate-Printing; Appendices: I Catalogue of nineteenth-century records of Dixon & Ross, with annotated transcripts; II Transcripts of correspondence in the McQueen archives; Technical Glossary; Bibliography; Index. Very Good in slightly used dustwrapper.