Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1894-09-15

S113 a week for a
season of forty-five weeks. They cost so
much money because art in this line has
attained a high point of DEVELOPMENT with
IN the last few years, many of the pic
lures which adorn fences and dead walls
To-Day being admirable in both drawing and
coloring. Immense quantities of these
piils are made in this city, which is the
center where all the theater business of
the United States is transacted Even
those ithographing concerns which have
factories elsewhere for the sake of lower
rents maintain agencies here, The pic
lures are printed almost always from stone,
which has taken the place of the wooden
blocks formerly used for the purpose
These blocks We're of pine and Eastwood
though cherry was employed for jobs re-
quiring very fine work
The ceiling of an entire floor of one New
York factory IS composed of a mosaic Of
out-of-date blocks of this kind Among
them one discovers such old friends as
Uncle Tom and Lord Dundraary This
method of printing has not been aban-
doned wholly. 1t is still practiced to some
extent on account of its greater cheap
ness Dry goods firms and other business
houses are using 1t for advertising and
IT Is employed by some newspapers for col
ored illustrations. Ten years ago all the
theatrical display bills were printed from
blocks. The earliest colored cartoons of
Puck were produced in the same fashion.
This branch of wood cutting used to be of
no small importance. The wood used being
soft was easily chiseled, the cost of en-
craving being from $3.50 to 80 per block.
-Four blocks were required for each pic
ture-one for black. another for yellow a
third for red and a fourth for blue. Com
binations of these gave all other hues and
tints.
How They Are Made.
manager of the theatrical company goes to
the factory and gives his ideas for the pic
ture to the artist-in-chief Under direction
white. This takes day. Competition is so
brisk that quickness, which means saving
of cost, is of the utmost Importance. Never
theless, the sketch is elaborate and includes
all details. The drawing is all done ION
cheek as the technical phrase is, no mod
els being employed. The sketch being ap-
proved by the manager. possibly with some
corrections suggested, 1t Is handed over to
the BLACK man.. who copies it on the litho-
graphic stone, from which the black parts
of the picture are eventually to be printed.
Eut some artistic talent is required for
working in this way from a sketch. and so
photographs are used to a considerable eX
tent. Enlarged solar prints are made from
the photographs and these are reproduced
on the stone. This method does very well
for portraits of actors and actresses.
After the black man. has finished the
picture on his stone he adds the lettering
This has to be done backward, of course.
The workman gets used to doing it in re-
verse and finds ii no more difficult that
way though mistakes are easier to make.
Most of the lettering is executed by hand,
but some of ii Is printed from big type and
put on the stone by means of transfer
paper Now the stone is ready TO be eaten
with acid, after which four impressions are
struck off from 1t on sheets of paper. One
of the sheets goes to the .artist-in-chief,
s,t, to- 10 to h tor
colors for a model. The other sheets are
handed over to the yellow, red and blue
men, who copy the model. 1t is rot in
tended to give here a description of the
processes of acknowledgements Suffice it
to say that the design made by the black
man is reproduced on three other stones by
the yellow man. the red man and the blue
man. When the four stones are finished
they are put into four great presses, one
carrying black ink another yellow, a third
red and the fourth blue. Each white sheet
that is to receive the picture must pass
through all four presses. The yellow is put
on first, 1t being the foundation color; then
the red, next the black and finally the blue
Stones with a very fine grain are used for
flesh tints and delicate tones.
To Make the Designs.
The designing of display bills is a peculiar
branch of art requiring a special sort of
training. A practiced boy can do much bet
ter at it than a first-rate artist who has
made no stucy of the subject. Really good
painters sometimes apply at the factories
for employment, but they are incapable
without serving an apprenticeship. The pay
for this kind of work is good. There are
half q dozen men in New York who average
800 week sketchers. 1t is hard to Sc
cure good operators in this line swho are
steady. They are rather apt to have a
weakness for rum, relinquishing their tasks
at inopportune moments to go off on ex-
tended sprees. For some reason unknown,
genius and whisky seem to have mutual
affinity. The business of advertising by
means of colored Autographs is steadily
growing and assuming new development.
Nowadays man who wants to put a new
brand of lard on the market will spend
$1,000 or $4,000 off-hand on display bills.
A cigarette manufacturer will placard the
fences and dead walls of every town in the
country with beautifully executed posters
that cost 10 or 20 cents apiece The item of
show bills will cost a big circus 5000 a
week for a season of twenty weeks. Before
long designs will be transferred to the litho-
graphic stone directly by photography.
This is already being tried. but it is hard to
get large negatives that are distinct enough
for the purpose. The difficulty will be over
come eventually. large bill consisting of
twenty-four sheets, each sheet four by six
feet costs S1.6S.
The bills turned out at the factory in New
York are distributed by express, at the or
ders of the theatrical manager. to the vari-
Gus towns at which his company is to APP
quireS There are SO many blank walls so
many fences available, and it pays to spend
Just about SO much on advertising in this or
that locality. A batch of Autographs is
forwarded to a certain theater in Oshkosh,
for example, and the theater places them
in the hands of The local bill poster, whose
services it regularly employs. The theater
pays for the posting of the bills, perhaps
$50 or $40 week depending on the character
of the shows. For Patti very little advertis-
ing would be done.
The advance agent of the company ar
rives in town week or ten days ahead of
the company. He gives orders to the bill
poster to what parts of the city to
be billed &c. The bill poster controls
fences and walls all over. When a new
building goes up he rents the fence around
1t. His business is to keep an eye on and
to secure all good places for FASTING ad-
vertisements. He has a board on which
all the advertising spaces controlled by him
are marked. with the dimensions of each,
showing at a glance how many sheets each
one will hold. Brass pegs show the present
locations of bills for each theater that en-
ploys him. Wooden pegs indicate the loca-
ton of job work.. e., commercial adver-
tisements.
The Bill Boards.
Thus, the bill poster knows just what
space he has available and the location of