1901 - Explore Burpee's Quarter Century Catalog

I am such a sucker for a fun bird's eye view lithograph, and, for some reason, the architectural boastings of seedsmen.
Have fun walking around the Burpee farms and stores, don't trip over the litho dots :-)

Source

1892 - Lithography Dots from Mastodon Corn; W. W. Barnard & Co

Litho Dots

I have to recover from my last poor choice in seed articles.

Here is a selection of my beloved dots from a back cover of a W. W. Barnard & Co catalog from 1892.

(Plus, any corn named Mastodon deserves not to be forgotten.)

Nice Link: The Flowering of Color Printing (About Lithography)

Lovely shell pattern of dots below :-)

Hexagonal dot filled patterns below are not all the same... which is what I find so attractive.

1908 - Cover Art from Miss Emma White's Seed Catalog

It is February 20, 2016.   It was 60º F. outside today!!

I am done with winter even though I fear it is not done with Connecticut...but who knows?! 

Anyway, I am in the mood for flowers and I just found this lithographed cover from Miss Emma White at the MERTZ DIGITAL COLLECTIONS.  I love the stippling.

Join me in dreaming of summer :-)

Eureka! Found Some Beautiful Rice's Seed Packets

Most seed companies bought stock seed packets from printers and had their name printed over the stock image. Rice's, on the other hand, commissioned distinctive artwork for its envelopes. (I got that bit of info from an auction description so take it with a grain of salt...but it does look to be accurate.)

 I could not find any images of the packets for weeks, finally writing to the Ephemera Society of America as they mentioned online they had some and did intend to put them up some day.  I said I hoped they would!!  An hour later I found some small images, then the large images here.
Weird.

The packets are unique to Rice as far as I can tell.  I haven't seen them elsewhere (not that I am a packet collector). Another interesting detail is there is no lithographers name on the packet.

Proofs for a Ferry Seed Packet

This is a wonderful find from Ebay if you are
interested in how things made. ..seed packets in particular. 

The Ebay description was as follows:

"This is a genuine original one of a kind progressive proof book used by stone litho printers to check the quality of each stone and it’s functions! This is from the files of Calvert Litho, one of the highest quality lithographers at the turn of the century.

Calvert was the most expensive lithographer in the country, but Mr. Ferry was a proud man and probably wanted the best in everything, especially his own products! ...

Surprisingly clean for a progressive proof book kept in the back room of a printing shop with all 13 pages intact! Approximate size: 6” x 8”."

Before you scroll down, estimate how many colors were used to give the above effect!

from Wikipedia: Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints. ... The initial technique involved the use of multiple lithographic stones, one for each colour, and was still extremely expensive when done for the best quality results. Depending on the number of colours present, a chromolithograph could take months to produce, by very skilled workers. However much cheaper prints could be produced by simplifying both the number of colours used, and the refinement of the detail in the image. Cheaper images, like advertisements, relied heavily on an initial black print (not always a lithograph), on which colours were then overprinted. To make an expensive reproduction print as what was once referred to as a “’chromo’”, a lithographer, with a finished painting in front of him, gradually created and corrected the many stones using proofs to look as much as possible like the painting in front of him, sometimes using dozens of layers.

Links:  

• A very nice short video from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts explaining lithography.
• A page showing magnified examples and explaining chromolithography.