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What is Photogravure and Chine Colle?

9/11/2024

I am often asked what is Photo Gravure. It is currently my favorite alternative process. I took an advanced class last summer with Jeanne Wells. After that, I became obsessed with making and printing larger plates. This summer I went to northern Maine to Jeanne's studio for more lessons and we made large plates, 1/4 plates, 1/2 plates, and full size plats. Below is a description of the process. At the bottom is a short video showing how I print a plate.

The Photogravure process was important in 19th-century photography, but by the 20th century was only used by some fine art photographers. By the mid-century it was almost extinct, but has seen a limited revival.

The original photogravure (in French héliogravure) is a process for printing photographs. A copper plate was grained or had an added pattern to the plate. It was then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph.

Photogravure registers a wide variety of tones, through the transfer of etching ink from an etched copper plate to special dampened paper run through an etching press. The unique tonal range comes from photogravure's variable depth of etch, which means, the shadows are etched many times deeper than the highlights.

The newer technique of the digital direct-to-plate photogravure process was developed where the photograph is printed onto a polymer plate using a flatbed printer. The flatbed printer etches a random dot pattern into the plate in a completely controlled, precise way.

The plate is exposed under UV light The plate is then developed in water. After proper drying and curing, the plate can be inked and printed. The exposure produces an "etched" polymer plate with many thousands of indentations of varying depth which hold ink. This is transferred as a continuous tone image to a sheet of paper. Depending on the quality, the resulting print may look similar to or the same as those produced with the traditional photogravure process.

A stiff, oily intaglio printing ink is applied to the whole surface of the plate. The plate is then gently wiped with tarlatans to remove the excess ink and to force the ink into the recesses or wells of the plate. It is finally wiped with the heal of the hand in lite, sweeping strokes. This removes the excess ink from the polished highlights and high points leaving ink in the etched areas. After the edges are cleaned, the plate is placed on the printing bed of an intaglio press.

It is covered with a sheet of dampened rag paper and then three layers of thin wool blankets.
The plate and paper are run through the press at high pressure. The high pressure pushes the fibers of the dampened paper into the wells of the plate which then transfers the ink onto the paper thereby creating the impression called intaglio printing. The paper is carefully peeled off the plate and placed between blotters and weighted so it will dry flat. The plate can now be re-inked for another impression or it can be cleaned for storage.

Chine Collé is a technique, used in conjunction with the printmaking etching processes. This results in a two-layered paper support consisting of a tissue-thin paper, cut to the size of the printing plate, and a larger, thicker support paper below. Both the tissue and the support sheet are placed on top of the inked plate and run together through the printing press, with a thin layer of adhesive between them to reinforce the bond produced through the pressure of the press. The process creates a subtle, delicate backdrop to the printed image. Chine is the French word for China, referring to the fact that the thin paper originally used with this technique was imported from China. In addition to China, paper was also imported from India or Japan. Collé is the French word for “glued."

The final Photogravure print is a long and detailed process resulting in a beautiful fine art print. Creating a one of a kind print is the appeal, even though the plate can be re-used, it can never be inked and printed exactly the same. The differences make each final print unique and distinctive.

I am completely hooked on the whole Photogravure process. Unfortunately for my husband, we are going to have to figure out what intalligo printing press I need and better yer, where will we put this pice of machinery.

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Kelly Walkotten

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