Woodburytype process

[Eric Woodbury]

Is anybody out there doing this process? I see there is a relatively new book on this topic. Anybody read it? Do you know how to contact Barret Oliver? I'm interested in trying this process. Any info is appreciated.

Thanks.

[Ross Chambers]

Not doing it, and not planning to since I tracked it a little after seeing a Woodburytype made by Woodbury (a relative?) himself in Australia. It was superb!

However the procedure followed by Woodbury appears to require hydraulic presses of great force, and my i/net searching suggests that the only Woodbury press remaining in the world is in Sydney, Australia.

I haven't confirmed this, but Sydney at one time had a network of hydraulic pressure lines, and I suspect that the site of the Woodbury press (of all places: in the NSW railways maintenance yards!) may have been on that network.

I attended a lecture at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney on historic processes and the drift was that, despite its impressive technical qualities, the Woodburytype was impractical for bulk publishing purposes (not that I imagine this would be a concern for an artisan).

I've never been able to reconcile the information below, but it may help:

http://www.alternativephotography.com/process_woodburytype.html

Regards - Ross

[Struan Gray]

You might also want to look up "Nature printing", a similar process to Woodburytype, but using botanical specimens instead of textured gelatin.

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/color/natures.htm

[Ole Tjugen]

Woodburytype was made by pressing a lead ingot with great force against a photographic negative developed in a special super-tanning developer. The resulting lead relief was then used for printing a limited number of prints using coloured gelatin as "ink".

The size is limited by the pressure of the available hydraulic presses - the pressure needed is proportional to the area of the image - and by the necessary homogenity of both negative and lead ingot.

I believe it was the only printing method capable of producing true continuous tones - and I've been playing with the idea of trying to make it work. Maybe the 4.5x6cm plate camera could be useful...

[Jon Shiu]

You might want to contact Carl Mautz Publishing to get in touch with the author.

Jon

[Eric Woodbury]

Thanks all for the info and ideas.

Ross, I read that Woodbury's last press was in Australia, but it is not to say that any large press couldn't be made to do the process. It takes 5000 psi to image the gel onto the lead. Ole, because of that pressure, 4.5 x 6 cm might be a good size. I was hoping for some of my 5x7s, actually. This would take a 100 ton press, which is not that large, but may require some platens that might be difficult to find. You are right about the continuous tone nature of the Woodburytype. They supposedly look just like a photograph. It is, or was, the only printing process that didn't break the image into some form of dots/lines.

Jon, good idea. I've just did this, so let's see if I hear back.

Thanks again, all. I let you know.

[Scott Davis]

Another source for contacting Barrett Oliver would be to give the folks at Bostick & Sullivan a jingle on the phone. They had him out to APIS last time to present about the Woodburytype book, and he had some examples of originals to show. If I recall correctly, there is another functioning Woodburytype press here in the US. I think whole plate size was about the functional upper limit of the process for the reasons already mentioned. Also, it was a much slower process than any of the competing mechanical printing processes, therefore it quickly fell out of favor. A Woodburytype press was capable of making perhaps a hundred or so prints per day, whereas the presses adopted by mass publishers a decade or so after the Woodburytype's introduction were capable of thousands.

[Gordon Moat]

. . . . . . Woodburytype. They supposedly look just like a photograph. It is, or was, the only printing process that didn't break the image into some form of dots/lines.

. . . .


Continuous tone, or approaching continuous tone, can be done in mechanical reproduction, though not without great difficulty. One old method know as Collotype is almost indistinguishable from continuous tone photographs, until you place a loupe onto the surface, though the loupe shows what appears to be extremely fine grain. You could probably find a hand crank press to do Collotypes. While it is not Woodbury, the results are nearly as close as one can get, and quite impressive when viewing in person.

http://www.alinari.com/en/stamperia.asp

This is a very old firm still producing Collotypes by hand in Italy. They explain a little about the process on their website.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography (http://www.gordonmoat.com)

[Eric Woodbury]

Gordon, interesting shop there in Italy. Thanks for the info, but I'd have to change my name.