The Woodburytype

The Woodburytype was the first commercially practical photomechanical technology for printing photographs with ink. Traditional photographs are made with a combination of chemicals that are sensitive to light and, upon exposure and subsequent further chemical treatment (development), the image that is visible is a product of the chemical reactions involved. Starting around 1850 serious research began into methods that could be used to print photographs with ink instead of chemistry. Several concerns were important at the time; many chemical photographs were not processed very well and tended to fade or yellow over time, chemical printing was messy and could be quite expensive, and at a time when text printing presses began to speed up rapidly, larger quantities of photographic prints were needed in less time. All of these concerns came together in the Woodburytype. Developed independently by Walter Bentley Woodbury and Joseph Wilson Swan in 1864, and brought into commercial production by Woodbury a few years later. The Woodburytype was faster and less expensive than chemical prints and it produced an object that was as permanent as the paper upon which it was printed.

Lead printing plate for Brad, Chuck Close.

approx. 9x12 inches.

The finished Woodburytype print for Brad, Chuck Close, with the ink overflow around the edges. 11x14 inches.

In addition to all of these practical factors, the Woodburytype process produces the best rendition of photographic tone of any mechanical technology, even still to this day. They are almost indistinguishable from chemical prints. This lead to it being prized by photographers and artists as well as commercial printing houses and guaranteed its place in the history of photography. It was used widely in England and continental Europe, and briefly in India, Australia and North America. It was used most often for book and journal illustration, but was also used for cartes de visite and other ephemera. The process began to die out starting around 1890 when even faster and less expensive technologies like the half-tone began to replace it in commercial production.

The Woodburytype is unique amongst all photographic and printing technologies in that the final image is printed using a gelatin ink impressed from a lead plate. It is an odd hybrid of borrowed photographic and traditional printmaking techniques. First, a photographic film with a relief instead of a chemical image is produced from the original negative. This relief is then pressed into the sheet of lead under enormous pressure - around 5000 pounds per square inch - then the lead is used as a printing plate.

An original Woodburytype, ca. 1875

A History of the Woodburytype book, 2007

Carl Mautz Publishing

In 2007 Carl Mautz Publishing released A History of the Woodburytype, by Barret Oliver with a special edition with a tipped-in Woodburytype, the first time the process had been used commercially in a century. In 2009 Two Palms Press, NY collaborated with Oliver to publish the Chuck Close portfolio of seventeen Woodburytypes. In 2015 Two Palms and Oliver collaborated again with Matthew Barney to produce a set of four Woodburytypes, electroformed with copper and plated with nickel and gold.