Early Photographic Processes

Photogravure

1879 -

Discovery

Photogravure is a photomechanical process.  Printing plates are etched from photographic images.  This process can produce high quality prints in large quantities.

The process is derived from Talbot's photoglyphic engraving.

In 1879,  Karl Klic (Klietsch) (1841-1926) modified the process by using copper cylinders instead of plates.

This was known as rotary printing or rotogravure.  However, Klic kept this process to himself, and it was not until 1910 that rotogravure started to be used in newspaper printing.

Process

Photogravure consists of etching an image on a copper plate, previously-prepared with a grained surface, so that the etched area can hold printing ink.

Description of the process

1.  Prepare a copper plate by cleaning with a weak acid then with potash.

2.  Lay a ground upon the copper plate.
The ground is made by up of fine dust and bitumen.  Warm  the plate gently until the bitumen adheres to it. 

3.  Use the original negative to make a carbon positive on a transparency, and allow to dry.

4.  From the carbon transparency make a carbon negative onto, say, Autotype tissue.
This is called a resist because it will, at a later stage, resist the action of the etching fluid.

5.  Lay the resist on the grained copper plate and develop (as for a carbon print) with warm water. Then dry the resist, using alcohol to do so.
This will leave a coating of gelatin on the ground copper surface, thinnest in the shadow.

6.  Etch the copper plate through the resist.
Do this by placing in a dish containing perchloride of iron.

7.  Wash the resist off the copper plate, then print from the plate.  
The printing is normally performed by a professional copper plate printer.

I believe that the notes above were taken from a book published in the late 19th century.  Below is a rather different description based on an account in Looking at Photographs by Gordon Baldwin

Alternative description of the process

Proceed as above, except replace steps 3, 4, 5, 6 by:

3a.  Use a negative of the picture to be reproduced to create a transparent positive

4a.  Coat a tissue on one side with gelatin sensitised with potassium dichromate, then expose it to light under the transparent positive.  The gelatin will harden more on those parts receiving the greatest amount of light.

5a.  When wet, firmly press this tissue, gelatin side down, onto the prepared copper plate, then peel away the backing in warm water.

6a.  Place the plate in an acid bath, where the parts with the least covering of gelatin will be etched more deeply.

1893 Lecture

The process above was described at a lecture given to the Photographic Society of Great Britain in 1893.

The journal Photography, commenting on the lecturer, Mr Dennison,  reported:

"... the Society, and photographers generally, have been in luck's way to secure so capital an exposition and so lucid a lecturer upon an almost unknown process."

[Photography: 2 Mar 1893]

Result

The photogravure process is generally highly regarded, being able to produce high quality copies, with the images with charcoal blacks and bright whites, embedded in the fibres of the paper.

Results using rich sepia ink can also be very attractive.

Photogravure images have been described as having the subtlety of a photograph and the art quality of a lithograph.

[Appalachian Arts web site]

The finished picture shows the mark of the plate around the picture.  The process can produce

In Edinburgh 

James Craig Annan visited the Austrian printer Karel Klik.  In three weeks, Annan was taught the photogravure process, and for a cost of 2,500 Austrian Florins was granted permission to use the process in Scotland.  He was not allowed to disclose details to others, the penalty for doing so being 10,000 Austrian Florins. [Bill Buchanan]

In the early 1890s, he made photogravure prints from some of Hill & Adamson's calotype negatives, and to used them to promote Hill & Adamson's work internationally by sending the photogravures to exhibitions.

James Craig Annan made a fine set of photogravures of his father's images of the Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow. T&R Annan published these in 1900.

In 1892, when the Photographic Federation of the United Kingdom came to Edinburgh for their annual excursion and series of meetings, Edinburgh was well covered by reports in the photographic journals. 

The British Journal of Photography reported on a visit to James Good Tunny's studio, mentioning that in addition to processing his own work, JG Tunny also handled photogravure work for the trade.

Thirty years later, photogravure still appears to have been  topical.   Victor L Alexander gave a lecture to Edinburgh Photographic Society on the photogravure process on 5 April 1922.