Chapter 81 How to Identify Prints

I visited my mentor on Friday, and I brought along a few items which, when I tried to catalogue them, led to questions. One of the items contained what I thought might be chromolithographs, but I didn’t want to say in my bibliographic description that they are chromolithographs unless I could be sure that they are. I knew a few basics, but I didn’t know how one tells with certainty chromolithographs from other types of illustration. I was hoping Mr. Z. had an actual chromolithograph he could show me. He didn’t disappoint. He did indeed have a couple of books with genuine chromos, and we looked at them closely and compared them to the item I’d brought in.

Mr. Z. also introduced me to a marvelous book, Bamber Gascoigne’s How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Ink Jet. (With 271 illustrations.) What a great book. It helps one to understand the process used to create chromolithographs, discusses engraving, relief and intaglio, woodcuts, and defines many other processes of creating prints. I’m definitely going to add this one to my Christmas wish list, and if I don’t receive it from Santa, I’ll buy my own copy.

I suspect that there are a few of you more experienced booksellers who are probably amused or shocked at this post, wondering how it is that I didn’t already know about this book, which seems to me to be a fairly essential reference. All I can (weakly) answer is that I learn as I go, and, if no one tells you about these things, you just discover them when a question important enough to make you seek out an answer arises.

Thank goodness for my mentor. When I don’t know something and I can’t find the answer on my own, I ask him where to turn for information or I ask another bookseller friend. I think I may have been told about this book at the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar last August, but that, as we got a good deal of information that week and I didn’t have any questions related to illustration at the time, I forgot about it. If you know of any, feel free to add any other good references on identifying prints by leaving a comment. Identifying prints properly is absolutely essential to good bibliographic description. What would be more embarassing than to identify something as a chromolithograph only to be told by a potential customer that it wasn’t? In my opinion, it’s always worth it to take the time to research these things, and now I know how.

I did a little bit of baking today, and I’ll leave you with a photo of my favorite holiday fudge, which, in a flurry of Yuletide overkill, I inflict upon all of my neighbors and relatives. (You knew it had to be something chocolate, didn’t you?)

See you in the reference section!