In this video, we look at part of the printing process of one of the most important scientific documents of all time.

This short video, part of the 'Objectivity' series, highlights the research of Dr Katie Reinhart (CRASSH, Cambridge). The video features Dr Katie Reinhart, Postdoctoral Research Associate on the AHRC-funded project "Making Visible: The Visual and Graphic Practices of the Early Royal Society." Join her in the basement of the Royal Society and learn about the printing process behind one of the most important scientific documents of all time!

Learn more about Katie's research and experience the online exhibition "Science Made Visible".

Cabinets of prints and drawings are found in the earliest art collections of Early Modern Europe. From the sixteenth century onwards, some of them acquired such fame that the necessity for an ordered and scientific display meant that a dedicated keeper was occasionally employed to ensure that fellow enthusiasts, as well as visiting diplomats, courtiers and artists, might have access to the print room. Often collected and displayed together with drawings, the prints formed a substantial part of princely collections which sometimes achieved astounding longevity as a specialised group of collectibles, such as the Florentine Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe at the Uffizi (GDSU).

Prints and drawings, both bought and commissioned, were collected by princes and by private amateurs. Like the rest of their collections, the prints and drawings were usually preserved and displayed as part of, or near, the owner’s library in close proximity to scientific instruments, cut gems or small sculptural works of art. Both prints and drawings not only documented an encyclopaedic approach to the knowledge available at the time, but also depicted parts of the collections in the form of a paper museum. Prints and drawings also served as a guide to the collections. They spread their fame, and the renown of their owners, across Europe and into new worlds of collecting, both East and West.

This volume explores issues such as: when, how and why did cabinets of prints and drawings become a specialised part of princely and private collections? How important were collections of prints and drawings for the self-representation of a prince or connoisseur among specialists and social peers? Is the presentation of a picture hanging in a gallery, for example by Charles Eisen for the Royal Galleries at Dresden, to be treated as documentary evidence? Are there notable differences in the approach to collecting, presentation and preservation of prints and drawings in diverse parts of the world? What was the afterlife of such collections up to the present day?

In nearly every print room worldwide are preserved mostly anonymous drawings that look like prints. This study will focus on a group of ten such drawings preserved in an album in the Albertina, Vienna, from the collection of Prince Eugene of Savoy, by the Flemish-French artist Pierre Louis van Schuppen (Antwerp 1627 – 1702 Paris). The variety of prints copied from different schools and periods suggests that Van Schuppen was making a practical study of the history of printmaking. The choice of prints copied is revealing and arguably the Sadeler dynasty and Paulus Pontius had as much influence on Van Schuppen's approach to portrait prints as Robert Nanteuil who one would expect to be most influential.

Early nineteenth-century European textile printers were confronted by
increasingly copious amounts of raw fabric intended for women’s garments. To
maximize profits when decorating apparently infinite lengths of blank “canvas,” printers
embraced mechanized copper rollers alongside traditional block-printing techniques.
Some designers aimed to disguise the new economizing technology. Others highlighted
the rollers’ mechanical qualities by applying to them engine-turned, lathe-generated
designs. These designs, known as “eccentrics,” record a process resulting in abstract and
endlessly variable motifs. Previously utilized for generating decorative metalwork and
counterfeit-proof documents such as banknotes, lathe engraving’s precise permutations of
optically-playful line work signified visually the durable nature of precious materials and
the value inscribed on paper currency. These qualities map awkwardly, however, onto
mass-produced fashionable dress fabrics. The moiréd appearance resulting from eccentric
engraving further cast the fabrics as mere counterfeits imitating expensive silks.
This paper suggests that eccentric textile designs exhibit a mercurial textility
indicative of contentious commercial and social issues that came to the fore as the
industrial revolution progressed. Moreover, the lathe-engraved designs embody visually
the opposition of individual choice and group identification at the heart of fashion. The
patterns of curving parallel lines recall the most quintessential marker of singularity in
humans – the fingerprint. Yet the intricacy and accuracy of the designs betray limitless
multiplicity. Ultimately, the paper asks, did the mercurial fingerprint of the machine
impart a textility capable of opening new fields of visual, as well as social, possibilities?

This essay examines the history of women artists' participation at Atelier 17, the avant-garde printmaking studio. Although women have not factored strongly into histories of the workshop, they inspired its founding and had a strong presence there throughout its early years in Paris and New York City.

Calling itself the “Grand Central Depot for Cheap and Popular Prints,” Currier & Ives was a firm of printmakers and publishers founded in New York in 1834 by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) and, after 1857, headed by Currier and his partner, James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). It was one of the most successful commercial publishers of hand-colored lithographs in nineteenth-century America, producing more than 7,500 titles and selling hundreds of thousands of prints during their seventy-three years of operation.

Among the firm’s images, a limited collection of large and medium folio prints presented the work of important New York artists in lithographic form. The drawings, paintings, and prints in this online exhibition are the work of two of these artists: Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812–1876) and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait (1819–1905). They reveal the artists’ drawing and lithographic techniques, their accomplishments with the crayon, and highlight the lithographic and coloring processes developed in collaboration with publishers to translate artistic visions into reality.

Considered fine prints rather than commercial lithographs, Tait and Palmer's lithographs invite us to rethink the artistic value of Currier & Ives' large folios, which are among today’s most sought-after Currier & Ives prints.

Published in partnership with the Library of Congress, Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists presents an overarching survey of women in American illustration, from the late nineteenth into the twenty-first century. Martha H. Kennedy brings special attention to forms that have heretofore received scant notice--cover designs, editorial illustrations, and political cartoons--and reveals the contributions of acclaimed cartoonists and illustrators, along with many whose work has been overlooked.

Featuring over 250 color illustrations, including eye-catching original art from the collections of the Library of Congress, Drawn to Purpose provides insight into the personal and professional experiences of eighty women who created these works. Included are artists Roz Chast, Lynda Barry, Lynn Johnston, and Jillian Tamaki. The artists' stories, shaped by their access to artistic training, the impact of marriage and children on careers, and experiences of gender bias in the marketplace, serve as vivid reminders of social change during a period in which the roles and interests of women broadened from the private to the public sphere.

The vast, often neglected, body of artistic achievement by women remains an important part of our visual culture. The lives and work of the women responsible for it merit much further attention than they have received thus far. For readers who care about cartooning and illustration, Drawn to Purpose provides valuable insight into this rich heritage.

Martha H. Kennedy, Fairfax, Virginia, is curator of popular and applied graphic art in the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress. She has curated or cocurated nine exhibitions of cartoon and illustration art, assists researchers, and works with colleagues to develop the Library's collections of original graphic art. She has published in American Art, the International Journal of Comic Art, the Washington Print Club Quarterly, and the Library of Congress Magazine, as well as in Cartoon America: Comic Art in the Library of Congress and Humor's Edge: Cartoons by Ann Telnaes.

255 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, 250 color illustrations

*View related exhibition website > https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/drawn-to-purpose/about-this-exhibition/
On view at the Library of Congress thru October 20, 2018

As Mark Twain once said, so might have Gutenberg: ‘The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’. Hardly a day goes by but a new letterpress workshop opens somewhere in the world. And, surprise, surprise, they are usually run by young people, from all sorts of backgrounds and for all sorts of reasons: poetry lovers and aspiring fine press publishers, technological dropouts, art students who have discovered that there is life after the Mac, hot-metal and type geeks, typographers suffering from digital fatigue, and people who just love the smell of ink and the sound of machinery.

Less common are full-length feature films about young people in thrall for the first time to the sirens of letterpress and old technology. But thanks to a crowdfunding project, Endless letterpress, now tells just such a story. Set in the suburbs of Buenes Aires (Argentina), the film (in Spanish, subtitleld in English) tells the tale of a group of young peoples’ encounter with a dying trade and a technique with endless potential.

After four years of preparation and shooting, the two first-time film-makers are now organising their own distribution in the hope that it will be shown in printing museums, collective workshops and anywhere else that people are thinking at the same time of the past and the future.

The film was made by Los Ultimos, aka Pablo Pivetta, graphic designer, photographer, short documentary maker and type collector, and Nicolas Rodriguez Fuchs, who studied graphic design and film at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (FADU-UBA) before working on post-production and animation for TV series and commercials.

You can see the trailer by clicking on the 'External Link' below.

The film has been submitted to various festivals who require the exclusivity until the decision of the jury, so it won’t actually be available for screening before 2018. But if you want to keep in touch you can follow the Los Ultimos project on Facebook.