Impressions of Colour: Rediscovering Colour in Early Modern Printmaking, ca 1400-1700 http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1659/ 8-9 December 2011
The absence of colour has been long been considered a defining
characteristic of early modern printmaking. Colour printing from the
hundreds of years between the invention of the printing press and 1700,
when Christophe Le Blon developed the three-colour method we use today,
has been thought of as rare and extraordinary. However, new research has
revealed that bright inks added commercial value, didactic meaning and
visual emphasis to subjects as diverse as anatomy, art, astronomy,
biology, cartography, medicine, militaria and polemics in both
single-sheet prints and books.
Despite the significance and scale of these discoveries, the bias
against colour continues to dominate print scholarship; the colour in
colour prints is often ignored. As the technology to disseminate images
in their original colour has spread, much important material has
suddenly become available to scholars. Now that techniques that were
thought to have been isolated technical experiments seem to have been
relatively common practice, a new, unified history of, and conceptual
framework for, early modern colour printing has become necessary, and
significant aspects of early modern print culture now must be
reconsidered. This conference aims to explore new methodologies and
foster new ways of understanding the development of colour printing in
Europe through an interdisciplinary consideration of the production.
Proposals considering diverse aspects of early European colour printing
in relief and intaglio from the middle ages to the turn of the
eighteenth century are welcome, including those dealing with textiles
and book illustrations. Please send a 250-word abstract for a 20-minute
paper to impressionsofcolour@gmail.com
by 29 June 2011. Conservators, rare book librarians and practising
printers are also encouraged to apply.
Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Textiles and Other Predecessors of Colour Printing
- Techniques, Ingredients and the Earliest Sources
- The Rise, Decline and Re-emergence of Chiaroscuro Woodcuts
- Special Problems of Reproductive Prints
- Confronting Historiographical and Artistic Preferences for
Monochromatic Black
- Issues in Intaglio Colour Printmaking
- Online Print Databases and their Role in Research on Early Colour
Printmaking
The conference will feature a demonstration in the Historical Printing
Room and a display of colour printing at the Cambridge University
Library
Convenors: Ad Stijnman (University of Amsterdam) & Elizabeth Upper
(University of Cambridge), with assistance from Emily Gray (Courtauld
Institute and British Museum)
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