In 1895:
Theodore Roosevelt was named head of the Police Commission in New York City.
“Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush” was the best-selling sheet music song.
Japan and China were at war.
Frederick Remington, the well-known American landscape artist, created his first sculpture, “The Bronco Buster.”
14-year-old Pablo Picasso had his first major public exhibition.
San Francisco newspapers featured accounts of Bannock tribal members leaving their reservation in Idaho, causing panic among the white settlers of the area.
The Duryea brothers won the first automobile race in the United States, finishing the 50-mile race in seven hours — a time much slower than most bicyclists of the time.
16-year-old Albert Einstein was working out the ideas that fractured the science of physics ten years later.
Cuban rebels were fighting to free the country from Spain. Spanish warships were seizing gunrunners off the coast of the United States.
Catherine Lee Bates published the words for “America the Beautiful.”
Frederick Roentgen discovered X-rays and took a picture of his wife’s hand to demonstrate the discovery.
The New York Times covered a controversial art exhibition that eminent guardians of public morals decided could include nude images of women but not of men.
Bicycle racing and bicycle riding were two of the most popular activities in the United States.
James Allen, a Yale graduate of 1884, returned to Connecticut after an 1886 blizzard ended his cattle ranching venture and subsequently joined a small printing company in Meriden, where he later became president.
The Panic of 1893 and the resulting depression still gripped the economy of the United States.
On August 7, 1895, 26-year-old Rex Brasher withdrew his savings from the bank, and along with his sailing partner George Middleton, embarked on the 28-foot sloop Phalarope to sail down the east coast of the United States in his quest to paint all the birds of North America.
Upon finishing his last painting, Rex declared to his partner Marie, “Well, let’s see, it is two o’clock on September twenty-fourth, 1924. I’ve been at this thing since May 16th, 1877. That adds up to — just forty-seven years, four months, eight days — and twenty-three minutes.”
After winning the gold medal in figure skating this year, Alysa Lui said, “I came here with one purpose: to show my art.” Nearly a century earlier, Rex harbored the same ambition to share his paintings with a broader audience. By 1928, he was living in “Chickadee Valley,” his farm in upstate New York. Surrounded by his finished paintings and the uncertainty of what to do next, he conceived a plan. He would publish the work as black and white prints, colored by hand with an airbrush. To execute it, he formed Rex Brasher Associates with Katherine Marie (Kay) and Philip Brasher, his niece and nephew. Rex would color the prints, Kay would write the text, and Philip would raise the capital.
However, Rex struggled to find a printer who could meet his exacting standards. The first printer he contacted bowed out immediately, and a New York City firm delivered a sample print that fell short. The ink was heavy and dark, bereft of the tonal range required for airbrushing transparent watercolors.
Rex needed a black and white print with very high tonal value. In theory, white surfaces reflect back, and black surfaces absorb all of the light that falls on them. Printer paper rated zero, and black ink rated one. Rex required a tonal range of 0 to 1,000 — white at one end, black at the other, and a wealth of gray shades in between. The paper he used measured near zero on the tonal scale. and the printing ink measured one thousand. Filling the gap between 0 and 1,000 had long challenged printers and artists trying to create fixed forms in multiple copies. An artist or photographer could produce tone relatively easily — simply mixing black and white yielded a shade of gray. But how could a printer produce shades of gray from black ink? How could variations of tone be created?
When an artist uses colored pencils on white paper, a wide tonal range can be achieved by changing the pressure. Light pressure allows the white background to show through, while heavier pressure fills in the paper and increases the tone or value. Cross-hatching provides another method, and layering one color over another deepens the tone. In pointillism, varying the density and pattern of small dots creates darker and lighter shades, a technique still used in scientific illustration to emphasize important details. Some printing processes, especially collotypes, employ irregular clusters and sizes of ink dots to produce wide variations of tone. In watercolor, varying the ratio of pigment to water allows painters to mix tones across a large range. The inherent transparency of watercolor enables an artist to achieve a remarkable depth of tone.
Fortuitously, the Associates were directed to the Meriden Gravure Company, which had a reputation for printing finely rendered art and scientific books. Harold Hugo, a 19-year-old sales manager at the time, traveled to Chickadee Valley to interview Rex and assured him that Meriden could preserve the tonal values in the black and white prints.
In the introduction to The Printed Picture, Richard Benson writes, “An underlying premise of the book is the fact that printing, photography, and digital technology as applied to pictures are all aspects of a single ancient process: that of creating fixed forms in multiple copies. I believe that pictures are as important as language, and together they form the glue that holds society together.” Benson began his career as a printer with Meriden Press in the mid-1960s and eventually became chair of the art department at Yale University. To accompany the book, he produced an entertaining and informative video series covering the various aspects of printing and its history. Although the book is now out of print, copies can be found in some used bookstores, and the video is available on YouTube and is well worth watching.
In the book, Benson explores four printing techniques, detailing the histories and variations of stenciling, raised relief, intaglio, and planographic printing.
Stenciling involves creating a mask from a suitable material, such as heavyweight paper, thin metal, thin plastic, or — in the earliest known examples — the back of the artist’s hand, as seen in the hand and handprint silhouettes found in caverns in France. Paint is then brushed or sprayed through the cutouts in the stencil. Rex cut hundreds of stencils and used an airbrush to add color to his prints. Silk-screen printing is a modern variation of stenciling. It uses a fine mesh screen as the stencil, allowing ink or paint to pass only where the screen has been opened. This makes it possible to reproduce images quickly and consistently.
Among the basic printing methods available, stenciling offered the best combination of affordability and quality for Rex.
Raised relief printing begins when an artist draws a picture on a block of fine-grained wood and carves away the areas that should not carry paint or ink, leaving a raised surface for printing. The first movable type was carved from wood, and starting with the Gutenberg Bibles, it made possible the first mass-produced books. Lead type soon replaced wood for text, but woodcuts continued to illustrate books before and after photographic methods were introduced. More detailed work on the end grain of fine-grained wood produces exceptionally fine printed images. Block printing remains a popular method for creating artwork, and raised relief type happily clattered its way into typewriters.
Unlike relief printing, which transfers ink from raised surfaces, intaglio prints are made by engraving or etching an image into a flat plate of copper or steel using sharp metal tools. Ink is applied to the plate and then mostly wiped away, leaving ink only in the incised lines. The plate is locked into a press and printed onto dampened paper under high pressure, forcing the paper into the ink-filled depressions. This technique produces very detailed artworks and illustrations and continues to do so today. Modern intaglio methods include coating the plate with a photo-sensitive layer and chemically etching the surface. Many variations exist, commonly called photogravures. The United States continues to produce intaglio prints for currency and postage stamps, demonstrating the method’s precision and enduring relevance.
Lithography, or “printing with a rock,” originated on fine-grained limestone slabs in Solnhofen, Germany, where artists discovered a way to print from a flat surface. Because the stone is extremely fine-grained — less than 1/250 mm — it could absorb water, stay damp for a time, and be ground perfectly flat. Artists drew greasy or waxy images on the dry stone and then dampened it with water; the drawing repelled the water while the stone absorbed it. Oil-based ink was rolled over the surface, sticking to the greasy drawing and being repelled by the water. The inked image was then transferred to paper with a high-pressure roller, allowing many prints to be produced from a single stone.
Modern high-speed photo-offset lithography evolved from this process. Plates made of thin plastic or aluminum carry the image through a photographic method, and presses can print on almost any surface at very high speed and resolution. The principle that oil-based ink and water repel each other remains at the core of lithography. Original stone-based methods, dating back to the 1700s, are still used for fine art reproduction today.
Collotypes are planographic in the way they print from a flat surface, but they also share some properties with intaglio printing. Their remarkable quality lies in reproducing nearly continuous toned artwork with no visible grain, though achieving this precision involves significant technical challenges. Meriden Press had a long history working with the medium, along with the necessary equipment and highly skilled printers. Their expertise satisfied Rex — a compliment we might all wish to receive — and at the right price.