1113
sive work was published in photogravure by his second
son, James Craig Annan (1864–1946), Old Closes and
Street—Glasgow, A Series of Photogravure, 1868–1899
(Glasgow, T&R Annan & Sons, 1900, 50 plates).
More recent efforts include portfolios of the pho-
tographs of Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989) and
Eduard Steichen (1879–1973).
Aquatint photogravure is practiced today by a small
group of artist photographers and printmakers. The
early process did not meet the requirements of popular
publications which required large print runs rapidly
executed. The improvements have been too numerous
to be discussed at length in the context of this article but
we will mention the main inventions. It was the same
Karl Klic mentioned above, who founded the Rembrandt
Intaglio Printing Co., at Lancaster, England, in 1895,
where the fi rst rotary gravure (aka. rotogravure) process
that made use of a doctor blade (to wipe the excess ink
off the surface of the plate) and a cross-line screen was
secretly exploited for many years. Printing from cylin-
ders on paper fed from large spools reduced the cost of
high-quality photogravures to a point where they began
appearing in popular publication.
Although the square pattern of photogravure screens
is normally associated with mass produced rotogravures,
Austrian born Theodor Reich worked out a way to use a
cross-line screen with a fl at-plate gravure ca. 1897 and
sold his invention to F. Bruckmann of Munich in 1903.
The process was exploited under the name mezzo-tinto-
gravure and was advertised in the Penrose Annual until
at least 1927.
In 1904 the fi rst rotogravure plant in America, the
American Photogravure Co., started operation in Phila-
delphia. In 1910 the fi rst example of the Rembrandt In-
taglio color process appeared in a book, Colour Printing
and Colour Printers, by R.M. Burch and C.W. Gamble.
In the same year, Mertens introduced his Monochrome
Intaglio Process, i.e., intaglio pictures combined with
letterpress text. This method was popular until the
1950s. In 1913, Alfred Stieglitz’ Camera Work pub-
lished fi ve duogravures in the April/July issue. These
two- color gravures should not be confused with the
duotone photoengravings advertised as “duogravures”
which appeared in many books published by the Boston
fi rm L.C. Page & Company during the years 1901 and- In was not uncommon in those days for publishers
to claim that the cheaper processes they used, including
collotype, were photogravure.
Annan, James Craig. A Wayside Shrine,
Ronda.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1949
(49.55.271) Image © The Metropolitan
Museum of Art.