Re: How can you tell?

I looked at some Hurley and Ponting carbon prints at the Museum of
Photography, Televison and Film at Bradford England. This is stuff in the
back room not on display. Sadly the stuff on display is crap. Mostly
cameras and reproduced Dag studios etc. England is even worse than the US
in making museum survival dependent on turnstile count. Hordes of school
kids traipsing through. Not bad in itself but it sure downgrades the
exhibits for folks like us.

In a word -- stunning, but then maybe I am prejudiced!

The curator -- who's name I have forgotten and shouldn't have -- asked me a
ton of questions about carbon. I asked some in return. I am also something
of an Antarctic freak. He said that the Ponting and Hurley carbon prints
were made and sold in the thousands. They were high end "commemorative"
prints. The phrase "Great Scott" was invented to refer to Robert Falcon
Scott. Scott was probably in his day as famous as Paris Hilton is today.

Carbon labs produced prints in a semi automated fashion for mass sales.
Even so the prices on these gems is astounding:

http://www.joseflebovicgallery.com/Catalogue/Archive/Cat-108-2004/Pages/pg08.html

Check out no 76. Pretty sad shape and still estimated at $6,000.00. Perhaps
because they were sold as high end posters folks did not take as good care
as they would have if they had been more expensive.

It was never a mass production process but I believe it was in between a
platinum print and rotogravure. My guess is it was a very high end poster
process. It was also considered to be above the silver processes in quality.

I was trying to chase down a carbon of Shackelton in his study in the
antarctic. Couldn't find it but I did find this one for fun:

http://www.scls.lib.wi.us/mcm/taylor/album_flowers.html

Follow the link to moccasin creek bridge and then click on the thumbnail. I
have currently made a big batch on deep forest green tissue. The reaction
has been mixed as to phone sales. Some say "YUK!" others are very
interested, I guess green carbon is a acquired taste!?

The museum in Bradford:

http://www.nmpft.org.uk/

   --Dick

At 11:52 AM 9/13/2004, you wrote:
>Richard Sullivan writes:
> > What is meant by engraving is also curious as there were
> > quite a few lovely photomechanical processes used then that are now
> > obsolete so it could be most anything.
>
>I'd like to ask a couple of follow-on questions to this discussion.
>
>* what would be considered the heyday of carbon printing?
>* what was carbon's niche? It seems to me that it would not have been
> used for large "editions" in the way that photo-, later roto-, gravure
> was used, or the way collotype was used, either?
>
>Thanks, Eric
>_______________________________________________
>Post to the list as PLAIN TEXT only - no HTML
>carbon mailing list
>carbon@spitbite.org
>FAQ at http://spitbite.org/carbon/list.html

_______________________________________________
Post to the list as PLAIN TEXT only - no HTML
carbon mailing list
carbon@spitbite.org
FAQ at http://spitbite.org/carbon/list.html
Received on Wed Sep 15 08:55:14 2004