1511
To increase productivity while waiting for the gelatin
to set, printers usually worked a number of presses,
either on a rotating turntable, or in the case of larger
presses, lined up along a bench. However the extra work
involved in trimming and mounting, necessitated by the
excess colored gelatin squeezed out around the edges of
the woodburytype image during printing (and a tendency
for prints to curl), reduced effi ciency, and mounting on
thin text paper could produce an unattractive cockle.
The color used in woodburytype “ink” is generally
Indian ink with a small amount of pigment added to
suggest a gold-toned albumen print. Unusually colored
woodburytypes, or prints on specially tinted paper (and
even wood and ivory), are rare considering the ease with
which they could be produced. However the woodbury-
type process is particularly well suited to glass, and
fi rms such as John Carbutt’s American Photo-Relief
Printing Company and George Smith’s Sciopticon
Company marketed highly regarded lantern slides and
stereo transparencies.
Woodbury’s slightly simplifi ed stannotype process,
introduced in the early 1880s in an attempt to make
woodburytype more attractive on a smaller scale, dif-
fered only in the method used to produce a printing
mould. Stannotype eliminated any need for an expensive
hydraulic press for the production of lead moulds by
the expedient of printing directly from a tinfoil-coated
negative dichromated gelatin relief. However stannotype
was only a limited success, as most amateurs found the
production of gelatin reliefs diffi cult and time consum-
ing, and large scale professional woodburytype printers
preferred the old method, as they already had the neces-
sary equipment to produce multiple lead moulds from a
single relief (limited by eventual crushing of the relief),
in order to simultaneously print, for example, either
eight cartes-de-visites or four cabinet cards, depending
on the size of the press.
When justifi ed over albumen for larger print runs,
woodburytype offered the permanence of the carbon
print and the productivity of traditional hand-inked
printmaking. In 1877, the 8,500 prints needed for a
frontispiece to the British Journal Photographic Alma-
nac were run off in three days “with the nonchalance
characteristic of a photographic portraitist whose trans-
actions are on an extensive scale, when requested to fur-
nish half-a-dozen prints from any particular negative.”
However maximum print size was limited: although 10
× 14 inches (25.5 × 36 cm) was achievable with special
mammoth hydraulic presses, most woodburytypes are
far smaller. Diffi culties distributing the gelatin “ink”
during printing further limited both size and the repro-
duction of highlights: although capable of rendering
exquisite, luminous shadow details, unfortunately clear
skies and other large white areas can appear mottled.
These drawbacks forced practitioners such as Adolphe
Braun or Friedrich Bruckmann to adopt alternative
processes for larger sizes or specifi c subjects.
Woodburytype fl ourished from about 1870 to 1900,
although because of the initial patent restrictions (Wood-
bury took out patents in Great Britain, France, Austria,
Belgium, Italy, Prussia, and the United States), large
capital equipment costs, and its technically demanding
nature, use was limited to a small number of special-
ist fi rms, mainly in Great Britain and France, and on
a smaller scale, in Belgium, Germany, and the United
States. In Portugal and Australia, the process failed to
meet expectations. In France, Goupil & Cie and later
Lemercier dominated, while in England, the then sole
licensee, the Woodbury Permanent Printing Company
apparently saw nothing remarkable in producing one and
a half million prints in the fi rst six months of 1876.
At its peak in the 1870s and 1880s, woodburytype
was extensively used to photographically illustrate
books and journals. Most were portraits, and appeared
as book frontispieces, or supplements to periodicals
such as Galerie contemporaine (1876–84) and The
Theatre (1878–97), but additional applications included
landscapes and architecture (Treasure Spots of the
World, edited by Walter B. Woodbury, 1875; William de
Wivleslie Abney’s Thebes and its Five Greater Temples,
1876), social documentary (John Thomson’s Street Life
in London, 1877–78) as well as reproductions of works
of art (Tresor Artistique de la France, 1877, contains
some very large woodburytypes as well as examples of
Léon Vidal’s related photochromie process). However
in 1890s, woodburytype seems to have been increas-
ingly displaced in the high quality sector of the market
by collotype and photogravure, both of which offered
the advantage of being able to be directly printed onto
plate paper suitable for binding into books.
Woodburygravure (so named because the matte-sur-
faced results resembled photogravure, although on close
inspection the image appears slightly raised, especially
in the darker areas) was a transfer process introduced
in 1891. After printing on a temporary support given a
special waxy coating to facilitate release, prints were
trimmed, transferred to their fi nal support, and the back-
ing sheet peeled away after the application of a solvent.
These extra steps were, however, expensive: Henry W.
Cave’s The Ruined Cities of Ceylon, fi rst published in
woodburygravure in 1897, cost 38 shillings, but a slightly
smaller 1900 reissue in collotype cost only 12 shillings.
Other processes derived from woodburytype include
Woodbury’s photo-fi ligrane, which used a woodbury-
type relief to impress images resembling watermarks
in already manufactured paper; Woodbury’s photo-
lithophane, which used a woodburytype relief to cast
photographic intaglio transparencies in translucent
porcelain; and Henri Rousselon’s Goupil gravure, which
used some form of granulation in a woodburytype relief