Thornburn's Birds - Chromo - 1903 - "CURLEW"

 FINE CHROMOLITHOGRAPH

PRINT OF BRITISH BIRDS

This 108 year old CHROMOLITHOGRAPH print was rescued from the book "THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED THORNBURN'S BIRDS" by Archibald Thornburn and was published by Hutchinson & Co. of London in 1903. 

Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed in color. When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrom is frequently used. Lithographers sought to find a way to print on flat surfaces with the use of chemicals instead of relief or intaglio printing.

Chromolithography became the most successful of several methods of color printing developed by the 19th century; other methods were developed by printers such as Jacob Christoph Le Blon, George Baxter and Edmund Evans, and mostly relied on using several woodblocks with the colors. Hand-coloring also remained important; elements of the official British Ordnance Survey maps were colored by hand by boys until 1875. The initial technique involved the use of multiple lithographic stones, one for each color, and was still extremely expensive when done for the best quality results. Depending on the number of colors present, a chromolithograph could take months to produce, by very skilled workers. However much cheaper prints could be produced by simplifying both the number of colors used, and the refinement of the detail in the image. Cheaper images, like advertisements, relied heavily on an initial black print (not always a lithograph), on which colors were then overprinted. To make an expensive reproduction print as what was once referred to as a “’chromo’”, a lithographer, with a finished painting in front of him, gradually created and corrected the many stones using proofs to look as much as possible like the painting in front of him, sometimes using dozens of layers.

This fine chromo print has an image that is about  5 1/2 " x 3 1/2 " and the image is 7 1/2" x 5".  It is in very good condtion. It is suitable for framing and would be an excellent gift.

The print that is being offered is of:

  "BLACK-HEADED GULL"