A Process for the Reproduction of Coloured Original Etchings.
Year: 1899

page_text: Date of Application, 27th Jan., 1899-Accepted, 24th June, 1899
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION.
A Process for the Reproduction of Coloured Original Etchings.
I, BERNHARD MANNFeld, of 11, Durerstrasse, Frankfort on the Main, Germany,
Artist-Etcher, do hereby declare the nature of this invention and in what manner
the same is to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and
by the following statement:-
The object of the present invention is a process for the reproduction of coloured
original etchings by which the artist is enabled to produce even the indispensable
colour plates with artistic freedom and without, on the one hand, imposing
through the mechanical part of the process, narrow bounds upon him, and, on the
other hand, failing to produce an accurate combined effect.
Original etching which was founded by Durer and Rembrandt and further
developed by Ludwig Richter and Max Klinger, and, after a long period of neg-
lect has, since the year 1867, again been brougat into consideration and impor-
tance by the inventor of the present process, has excited the desire on the part
of the artists engaged in such work to produce a greater delicacy and fuller effect
of the shading by the brilliancy of the colours. In the salons of Paris and London
for black and white drawings one finds, now and again, coloured original etchings
but these bear so exclusively the character of isolated works of art that they do
not fall to be considered at the present moment.
Under the Kobel process patented in the name of Hubert Herkommer, colour
plates are produced by galvanic precipitation on a picture painted with soft greasy
colours upon a silver-plated copper-plate; but this process is too costly and absorbs
too much time. Further the art of colour printing by copper plate, which is
effected by means of original etchings for different colours on so many different
plates, absorbs also too much time and is also too expensive especially when it is
considered that each single copper plate printing is exceedingly expensive; and
here it may be stated that the inventor of the present process had to take 250.
impressions for 50 sheets. Further the enormous amount of printing
required for copper-plate printing causes such a change in the dimen-
sions of the paper that the proper imprint of the etching seldom
fits into the coloured contours of the previous printings. And, again the
present polychrome copper plate prints and heliographic engravings are either
too pale or too weakly coloured and, in consequence, are of reduced value, or they
are very rich in colour and in that case too dear. Finally it is necessary to men-
tion those coloured original etchings in which the individual colours are laid on
the printing plate by means of patterns or stencils or by free hand, but this
method cannot rightly be termed a printing process but rather a painting process,
and, besides, it produces pale and defective prints which require to be retouched
in order to obtain a satisfactory likeness.
None of the aforesaid processes give a complete artistic effect, or, if they do
in some cases, then they cease, properly speaking, to be printing processes.
The essential feature of the present process is that it, without ceasing to be a
true printing process, allows the artist full freedom to produce delicate work
and excludes every kind of mechanical intermediary work.

page_text: The following is the modus operandi of the new process:―
The original etching is produced in the usual manner and afterwards worked
over three or four times to make it perfect in every respect. Copies of this origi
nal are printed on stones or metal plates in a number according to the number
of colours needed on the picture. On these secondary plates the parts intended
to carry the printing colour are covered with indian ink or chalk, to prevent them
from being acted on by the acid, which is poured over the whole plate to lower
the inactive places, giving the covered parts a relative projection sufficient to
act as colour-carrier in the following printing process.
Indian ink is used, when strong colour tones are to be printed, but with
weak colour tones chalk has to be used on account of its porosity, leaving the
acid a chance to act in a low degree on the covered places, and render them
fit to lay the colour on the picture in a weak tone like a pastel.
By means of these plates the colours are now printed one after the other on
Japanese, Chinese, or other suitable paper, and, before the colours so transferred
are quite dry, the sheets are drawn through a bath of benzine whereby not only
does the contour of the individually transferred colours become very much
weakened but the colours are caused to penetrate the paper so thoroughly that
their lustre and brilliancy become so similar to a pastel they they cannot be
distinguished therefrom. The sheets must now be thoroughly dried and then
pasted at the back, with a thin layer of paste, and re-dried, they are then
moistened, on the picture side, with a weak solution of alum and introduced into
the copper plate printing press where the proper impression of the etching is
produced, whilst, at the same time, the sheet is so pressed with its dry pasted side
on a strong paper sheet laid below it that it permanently adheres to it.
It is essential in this process that the colour plates be highly etched so that,
as a result, the impression can be made upon dry paper in order that no change
may take place in the size of the paper sheets when the colours are being printed
on them.
At the first printing of the deep etched etching the paper must be
moist but the change of size in the paper is then of no importance.
This process has been called "pastel engraving" because the pictures produced
so greatly resemble the pastel in the colouring and distinctness of the drawing.
The process produces, what no other similar process has, as yet, produced--a work
of art.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of my said
invention and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what
I consider novel and desire to claim is:-
The process for reproducing coloured original etchings, substantially as here-
inbefore described.
Dotad
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