Off on a tangent: Weirdly Complicated Machines and Processes

I am learning about printing history along with seed company history.  Unexpected, but cool.

When I was a little kid my Pop took me into a print shop where this absolutely gigantic machine cast my name in a lead slug.  The linotype machine was like Oz...and the guy who sat there and typed in my name was really a wizard as far as I was concerned.

My father used the linotype service to produce text to paste into camera ready artwork for everything from catalogs to package design. Rubber cement and little bits of glued down paper were how you created pages.  It seems so crude now, and I grew up with it!

The electrotype procedure is a little harder to get my head around, but it must have been an incredible money saver!
From Wikipedia: As described in an 1890 treatise, electrotyping produces "an exact facsimile of any object having an irregular surface, whether it be an engraved steel- or copper-plate, a wood-cut, or a form of set-up type, to be used for printing;  ... In printing, electrotyping had become a standard method for producing plates for letterpress printing by the late 1800s."

This explanation is really good!  Good ol' Ebay just cast this up on the shores of my blog.

"One of the most popular suppliers of engravings in the 1880s and 1890s was Albert Blanc.

Horticultural engraver and electrotyper, was born at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1850. When eighteen years of age he came to America, locating in Philadelphia, and secured employment in one of the leading engraving establishments. In 1870 he began business for himself. His proficiency quickly brought him to the front, and success greeted his venture. In 1885 he began the study of horticultural engraving and electrotyping, and since then he has had practically a monopoly of this business. His engravings are used on all parts of the globe, from the Russian capital to the Cape of Good Hope, and from the American continent to Australia. He has practically revolutionized the seed and floral trade, enabling any seedsman to illustrate his catalogue at comparatively little expense. Catalogues of new engravings are issued yearly, of which he furnishes duplicates at a very moderate charge.

Some four years ago Mr. Blanc began the cultivation of cactus plants for pleasure, and appreciating their beauty, as well as their ease of cultivation in apartments and gardens, he concluded to make them popular, and went into the business on an extensive scale. He engaged collectors in all parts of the world, and under the firm name of A. Blanc & Co. this is now the largest establishment known for the cultivation and propagation of these interesting plants. They supply most of the wholesale houses here as well as in Europe. Their yearly exhibitions in Horticultural Hall usually attract the greatest attention, plants being shown there that cannot be duplicated anywhere.

A. Blanc & Co.'s catalogue and "Hints on Cacti" are most beautiful works, well calculated to give the craze to every lover of the curious and interesting. Their extensive greenhouses at Forty-eighth and Walnut streets have proved to be very attractive to connoisseurs. From there they supply not only the humble artisan who wants a few plants for his window, but also the Royal Gardens at Kew, England, where can be seen some giant cacti in all their glory, and which excite the wonder and admiration of all who visit these well known gardens. A. Blanc & Co. have also agencies near Tucson, Arizona, and Monterey, Mex." From: 1891 - Philadelphia and Popular Philadelphians

Below is a page from a Vilmorin-Andrieux & Cie, 1888 catalog  from which a seed company or nursery could order electrotype printing plates.

  This thick catalogue assembles the vast collection of wood-engraved illustrations used by the Vilmorin-Andrieux firm in their seed catalogues and other publications. Electrotype printing blocks for all the images depicted could be ordered from the firm for use in illustrating retail seed and nursery catalogues. Instructions for ordering these are printed at the front in French, English and German. The numbered illustrations are printed on one side of the sheet only, "the other is intended for the illustrations which we may publish in the future and copies of which will be sent to all the purchasers of this album, to be pasted on the blank side corresponding to the numbers." Altogether at least 4000 images are included, the majority of which are devoted to flowers, although vegetables, herbs, trees, fruits, grasses, garden implements, etc. are also shown. The illustrations are accompanied by descriptions in French, English and German, and by prices in francs and sterling.

Silly Seed Stuff for a Sunny Sunday

Mabel Lucie Attwell, the illustrator of the above rotund toddler, was born in 1879...the ninth child out of ten children born to a butcher. If this link is correct, she was talented and spirited... and made a good living eventually producing these very popular images!  

And who was Margaret Tempest??  A woman, born in 1892, who as a child enjoyed sailing Ipswich, who illustrated a zillion books...that's who :-)
This website dedicated to keeping her memory alive is cool.

Lazy Wife's Pole Beans!

Miss Mary Martin...a seedswoman in the tradition of the
other Misses I posted about earlier.

I thought I had done something on Miss Mary, but I can't find it so here is...perhaps again, but there are some fun extras here this time.
I found a very interesting anecdote about the Lazy Wife's Beans which is worth reading if you grow pole beans!! You can still buy seeds; at Amishland Heirloom Seeds, for one.

"This is an old bean intoduced by German immigrants in the United States about 1810. It is one of our oldest beans to be documented. It got its name because it was one of the first beans to be "stringless", a real boon to the busy housewives of the day. It is very prolific and sets its beans in clusters that are easy to pick, another "lazy" thing that makes it great." 

I like her earliest portrait.  The photos on the later catalogs look sort of odd -snooty, standoffish - too well dressed?




Speaking of photos, these catalogs are still mostly engraved plates (which I love) but, horror! she has a handful of nasty blurry photos in the 1900s catalogs. Yuck.

Miss Mary Martin does have wonderful illustrations usually...some examples are below.



artist, A. Blanc, who did the Christmas Orchid had a great time.
I looked him up and found this ad.





These two have  style.  I don't see any signature.  Miss Mary had an eye for friendly engravings.













These ads were in magazines... the first one is more widely known now as KUDZU!!!!

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.

On the Road: Seeds at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem MA

Yesterday was rainy and windy, so what could be better than heading out with my hub to a museum followed by a lunch somewhere?

We chose the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.  One of our favorites for decades, the Peabody has a great permanent collection relating to the China Trade of the 1800s and ships in general, working craft, seamanship and art from around the world that sailors would bring back to Salem.  With the "new" addition to the museum they have good gallery space for traveling shows, too.  We were hoping there would be something there, but didn't really care. I assume the PEM wanted to attract more visitors so they have expanded their
coverage to the arts, fine and industrial, of all eras.

This large hall has been kept as it was originally. 

It is a delightful feeling to walk into the space.

The cabinets displayed artifacts brought home to Salem and donated to the museum by the original members of the East India Marine Society which was established in 1799.  

This giant seed caught my eye.  Actually the chicken caught my eye  and I eventually saw this...but it is a BIG nut!!!!

You can see the opposite wall in the reflection!

From Wikipedia's Legends of the Coco de Mer:

"The nuts that were found in the ocean and on the beaches no longer had a husk, and resembled the dismembered lower part of a woman's body, including the buttocks. This association is reflected in one of the plant's archaic botanical names, Lodoicea callipyge Comm. ex J. St.-Hil., in which callipyge is from the Greek words meaning "beautiful rump". Historically these floating "beautiful rumps" were collected and sold for a fortune in Arabia and in Europe."

This looks like a niddy noddy with extra cross pieces...in a bottle. I don't know what it is supposed to be.  I wonder if it was supposed to be a niddy noddy to amuse a sweetheart...but the sailor forgot exactly what it should look like.

Above: Great show... designs of my past that influenced me.

That's my reflection :-)

1936 The first Airstream, called the "Clipper" in 1936, was named after the first trans-Atlantic seaplane. It slept four, carried its own water supply, was fitted with electric lights and cost $1,200.

Larkspurs and Potatoes

1880 was a good year for color illustrations in the Vick catalog. A very nicely written short piece on these magnificent catalogs can be found at the New York Historical Society Museum & Library's site.  Written by "sue" last year, I enjoyed reading it.  

I love these turnip illustrations and their appearance on the page.  Why?  I don't know.

Silly Bean

It is gloomy and rainy out.  Even though I know April showers bring you know what, I feel the need of a silly seed.  And here it is! 

Science for kids, turn of the 20th century, Seed-babies by Margaret Warner Morley...

Published 1896

If you have a first grader,  try this as a bedtime book when they are learning about seeds!

Want a mini virtual vacation in Maine?... go to this PBS site to share the sights and sounds of nature on a Maine island. Time of Wonder, by Robert McCloskey, 1958 Caldecott Medal Winner.