Colour Printing Articles (Reprint)

Old Printing Processes explained

Quite some collectors wonder how the cards they have were produced once. Now most processes used back then are no longer. Furthermore people in charge were really creative. For instance they loved to combine different processes in order to receive optimal results. Later also to save time and money. When you look at some of the old cards these days, produced 120 years or so ago, they are still of outstanding quality. Explaining the former production methods to a collector turned out to be quite a challenge. Especially when command of English is limited for lengthy technical explanations.

Meanwhile you can look up major old printing processes around once on the internet. More or less well explained. Back then I was very happy to receive a copy of "The Times", no. 40,000, published on Tuesday, 10 September 1912. Donated by British collector Harry Potterton. Including a longer article titled "Colour Printing. The various Modern processes". I decided to reprint the entire article by and by. Left out the relatively few original illustrations and used printing trade related cards and advertising from my own collection instead.

The article reprints series was and is still well received. Still downloaded regularly from the old TPA web site. That is why I include the 5 files here again. For those who wish to learn a bit more on old production processes. Although I do have a good knowledge of printing in general, I still have cases where I do not know how it was done. It never becomes boring!

TPA 14 Colour_Printing_Various_modern_processes_1 [642 KB]
TPA 15_Colour_Printing_Various_modern_processes_2 [401 KB]
TPA 16 Colour_Printing_Various_modern_processes_3 [450 KB]
TPA 17 Colour_Printing_Various_modern_processes_4 [950 KB]
TPA 18 Colour_Printing_Various_modern_processes_5 [626 KB]

PPC Production: Printing and other Mistakes

No one is perfect. Mistakes are made, now and then. Under normal circumstances postcards were sorted and checked before being shipped to customer. Cards showing printing and other mistakes or any defects were sorted out. Well, nevertheless you still find cards today who passed controls despite condition. Some were even mailed.

A wide field of possible mistakes. "True" printing mistakes that occured during production including bad colour register, ink spots or other unwanted colour effects, wrong captions and/or address sides imprinted and so on. Not to forget spelling mistakes by composers. Many mishaps occured also during the post-printing stage, badly cut or competely wrong arranged sides are relatively often seen. Time pressure was also known back then already.

I show a printing mistake sample from pre-1905 origin. M. Hepp from Mannheim published a view titled "Greetings from Ludwigshafen" showing the bridge across the River Rhine. The collotype printed image shows a defect seen at right hand position. Okay, nothing really dramatic. But part of the bridge image (mirror image) is found printed also on the address side. Someone had a bad day.

An article on the "Printing Mistakes" topic appeared in TPA issue 21. Unfortunately in b/w only. See pdf-file below. A similar article with more background information and many colour ills. was published in TPA issue 35.

TPA 21 PPC_Production_Printing_&_other_Mistiakes [1.024 KB]