Showing posts with label James Vick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Vick. Show all posts

Sunday, June 10, 2018

1887 - Leptosiphon??






What is leptosiphon?
Vick's Illustrated Monthly Magazine and Floral Guide had these border suggestions for the 1887 gardens.   I liked the look of the page, the simple pink gypsophila, the multi-colored leptosiphon... the what?!

What sort of name is that?! Leptosiphon sounds more like part of an octopus!

Leptosiphon.    Now that is a name not jiggered by any commercial hopes.  It is a seriously un-cute name!

I wondered, could it have stayed so aggressively unlovely for 120 years?   

Then I looked it up, and yes - it can stay so aggressively unlovely!

Most all ads for seeds or plants just call it Leptosiphon.  

One or two mention it has a cute name - False Babystars - but only two that I found listed it as such. 







I found no reference in a simple search of old seed catalogs for False Babystars. Wikipedia will fill you in on the plant.




 




Sunday, May 28, 2017

American Flag Aster Planting by Seedsman James Vick

Tomorrow is Memorial Day so when I spotted this Rochester, New York postcard I thought to post it.  


Sunday, March 19, 2017

1882 - Painting of Tropælum for James Vick, Seedsman

Spring, 2017...snow everywhere.  I need these yellows and reds!!!
Let your imagination jump into this nasturtium, 
courtesy of James Vick's Vol 5 of
Vick's Monthly Magazine for 1882.






Tuesday, August 9, 2016

1901 - Vick's Nasturtiums, plus, Lamenting Photogravure

The year 1901 falls in the boring period of seed catalogs, after photographic reproductions were considered more modern. Below these images you'll find an article from 1893 describing the new technique of reproducing photographs much more easily than formerly possible. The beginning of the end as far as I am concerned.  The low contrast reproductions in the catalog are so boring and lifeless.

However, the cover and back cover of Vicks Garden and Floral Guide from 1901 still has the wonderful lithographed color and energy of the older catalogs.







 Compare the gray mushy reproduction of the nasturtiums above to this lively engraving from an 1887 Vick's illustrated monthly magazine and floral guide.


If you are interested in the engraved seed catalog work, use the search box
(up at the top of the page on the right) and use the query "engravings".



The beginning of the end...

American Printer and Lithographer, Volume 16 - 1893

A NEW PHOTO-INTAGLIO PROCESS

By Louis E. Levy.

WITH the exception, perhaps, of the domain of electricity, there is no other special field wherein the recent advances of science have opened so many avenues of progress and effected such notable changes as in the range of the graphic arts. From the time when, fifty years ago, the earlier researches of Scheele and Seebeck on light-sensitive compounds were first wrought into practical shape by Niepce, Daguerre and Talbot, the applications of photo-chemistry have increased in number and extent to such a degree that to-day the various processes of photographic reproduction would require a long catalogue to merely name them. 

Many of these variations, though marked, are unessential; others have proven of scientific interest only, while quite a long list of practical photo-reproductive processes have from time to time been superseded by simpler and more efficient methods.

The new photographic process which I have the pleasure of announcing is, as I trust will appear in practice, an effective and greatly simplified method of producing a photographic reproduction in the form of an intaglio engraving. Such engravings, technically known by the French term "photogravure" have been produced for some years past by a variety of photo-chemical processes, the most notable of which are those wherein the result is attained by means of a chrome-gelatin film. 

The fact that a film of chrome-gelatin becomes insoluble when exposed to light, and remains more or less soluble according to the degree to which light is permitted to act upon it, has been made the basis of a variety of processes for the production of photo engravings.

The gelatin film long served as the most effective means for the production of photo-engravings in relief, and still furnishes the basis for the production of photo-engravings in intaglio. For both purposes the sensitized gelatin film is exposed under a transparent negative or positive, as may be requisite in the subsequent procedure ; the unaffected portions and unreduced quantities of the exposed film are either swelled by absorption of a liquid or are dissolved and washed out, and the film then dried. In this condition it may be printed from direct, or it may be used as a mold to produce a reverse in a fusible metal ; or it may be covered with an electrolytic surface to receive an electrotype deposit, or it may be molded in plaster, wax, guttapercha or other suitable substance,from which, in turn, a reverse can be made by casting or electrotyping.

Intaglio photo-engravings have also been produced by a process wherein the varying amounts of reduced silver left in the developed gelatino-bromide plate are made to serve as a corrosive or etching agency on a plate of copper on which the bromide plate is imposed, but in general practice the washed out gelatin film has thus far proven the most practical means to the desired end. 

In all photo-intaglio processes hitherto known or practiced, the nature of the plate produced and the end sought to be attained is akin to that which is technically known as a mezzotint or aquatint engraving.  The essential feature of such engravings consists of the varying depths to which the design is sunken in the plate, the graduations of depth in the plate corresponding to the gradations of light and shade in the printed impression. The ink being rubbed into the depressions of the design and rubbed off from surface of the plate, the highest parts of the engraving represent the highest lights of the design, the deepest depressions render the darkest shadows and the intermediate depths produce the half-tone gradations of the picture. The difficulties attending the production of photogravure plates with the particular degree of graduation of depth which is responsible for an artistic effect in the printed impression are such that the process is practiced by only a few, the skill and experience needed for the work being obtained only by such individuals as possess artistic capacity and training.

In only one establishment, and that in Paris, has the work been brought to a high degree of quality, and there, as well as in other workshops, the hand of the skillful retoucher is frequently to be credited with the largest share in the final result.

To free this result as far as possible from the limitations of human handiwork, and to bring it forth under the more uniform and definite control of scientific procedure has been my aim in the experiments which have resulted in the present method. 

This method I have named "Photo-mezzotint", not because that is the most exact term by which to denote it, but because all the other good names have been pre-empted and made to do service in other directions.
The essential feature of the new method lies in the general fact that the picture, instead of being obtained from a graduated depth of the engraving, is produced from a sunken surface of uniform depth, the graduations of light, half tone and shade being effected by minute lines and stipples of varying thicknesses, but of uniform distance apart from centre to centre.

In this respect the photo mezzotint may be regarded as a development of the so-called half-tone relief process, the true mezzotint or photogravure effect being attained by reducing the thickness of lines and stipples and multiplying their ratio to the surface to such a degree as to render them invisible to the naked eye. In that way all the finest gradations from pure white to deep black are obtainable, with the result shown by the specimens before us. In these the picture is made up of equidistant stipples, varying from a microscopic point up to a size where they coalesce into a solid black, the half-tones consisting of stipples of about one four-hundreth of an inch in diameter and about 44,000 to the square inch. If a coarser stipple is used the effect varies from that of a mezzotint and approaches more nearly that of a line engraving, the lights and shades being made up of perceptible lines and stipples, like the effects of a steel or copper plate engraving of equal texture.

The processes at present in vogue for the production of photo-intaglio plates require not only long experience and a high degree of manipulative skill, but also take up quite a length of time—frequently a week or more—for their completion, and the plate, after passing the stages of the photo-chemical process, has then still to be extensively helped by the work of the retoucher. The retouching of photogravure plates inevitably introduces a degree of uncertainty as to the accuracy of the reproduction, the result as left by the retoucher being frequently very different from the original in its disposition of lights and shades.

By this new process all of these undesirable factors are eliminated; its manipulations are far more facile, the length of time for the entire work is reduced to a few hours, and the result is complete without the supplementary aid of the skillful engraver, except, possibly, in cases of local blemishes or accidental defects. It is therefore reasonably to be assumed that this new method of intaglio engraving, which has been the subject of an application for letters patent, may be regarded as a desirable addition to the category of the graphic arts.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

1889 Tease: Hang on, Northerners, They Are Coming!!!

The cool spring, and now summer, here in New England has slowed gardens down.  Big, ripe tomatoes and ripe melons are still far in the future.  

So when I saw this illustration from Vick's Floral Guide the image resonated with my dreams.

Then I had to know more about that melon with the Native American name... Irondequoit.


"Irondequoit aptly means “where the land and waters meet” for the town is bordered by Lake Ontario, the Genesee River, Irondequoit Bay, the 1000-acre Durand-Eastman Park, and the City of Rochester."
http://www.irondequoit.org/about
"...known as the garden spot of western New York, famed for its peaches, superb melons, and vineyards on the slopes of Irondequoit Bay, truck farms that produced celery, tomatoes, cucumbers, asparagus and numerous other vegetables. "
http://www.irondequoit.org/about/history-of-irondequoit

Monday, April 4, 2016

1895 - James Vick Makes An Odd Decision


A charming decision to have a different colored ink on each page, but odd, and I wonder if his printer recommended it. And if he did, why!?  Wouldn't it be a real pain in the neck?  

I tried to figure out how it could be done assuming the pages go through the press 4 or 8 up.  Can't figure it out.  Perhaps it is printed one page at a time?  It is stapled from the top about a 1/4 inch in from the edge.

The ink colors, in my opinion, are a bad idea as they often clash with how I color the plant in my imagination.

Whatever the reason Vick did it, it is worth sharing!




Wednesday, April 16, 2014

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.


Monday, April 14, 2014

An Early 1866 James Vick Flower Catalog - Rochester, NY





 Ah...spring and the promise of summer flowers.  James Vick started to make that promise glow once inexpensive  chromolithography was available around 1880.

But, this first catalog is an early one from 1866, so it is visually plain in comparison.  The one color plate seems more like folk art than advertisement!

To think, the year after the Civil War people were looking at this catalog.

The b&w engravings have a formal charm I like a lot.

 




I forget where I read it, but some of these engravings of flowers may have been used by more than one seedsman in their catalogs.  An engraving business that specialized in botanical illustration to the seed trade would offer the "off the rack" plates for sale at a more attractive price than having your own illustrations custom engraved.  That left more money in the budget for interesting "bespoke" art.







 View the whole catalog, or download it in any format you like, from the Internet Archive.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

1893 - A Disappointment; and Pansy Faced Sailors


James Vick's catalog would keep you busy reading for a long time.  It must have been a very welcome  delivery!                                                                                                                       
This catalog has a  chatty oddness that is charming.  The "novelties and specialties" at the front of the catalog were printed in violet ink.

(I found this ticket to the Fair somewhere online and wanted to use it...so here it is.)











Plain old black ink for the more regular offerings :-)




This ad was being used in magazines the same year.  Surreal pansy head dude is here too.