Page:TheAmericanCarbonManual.djvu/23

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INTRODUCTION.
13

may be predicated of a water-color drawing, may be affirmed of the photographs produced in the same materials. If carbon be regarded as the most stable coloring matter which can be employed, lampblack or other similar preparations of carbon can be used in the production of the print. Sepia, bistre, Indian-ink, or any combination of these or other pigments, by which a pleasing monochrome may be produced and permanency attained, is equally available in this method of printing.

Thus, a more certain control over the tone and quality of the picture is obtained, whilst absolute stability is secured. The surface of pictures produced by this process is devoid of the gloss, which is regarded by many as vulgar, in prints on albumenized paper; the lights being absolutely flat or dead, the shadows only presenting, in some cases, a slightly glossy surface. It will be thus seen that the pictures gain not less in artistic qualities of color and texture than in permanency.

Mr. Adolph Braun, Dornach (Haut Rhin) France, has already applied the carbon process successfully in a direction heretofore considered almost impossible to reach. He has made negatives of thousands of the drawings of the old masters in the art museums of Europe, and reproduced them in the colors of the originals, which embrace almost every shade and color.

This is an immense reach for photography, and will greatly lead towards the elevation of the art, and the cultivation of artistic taste. Mr. Braun has purchased Mr. Swan's patent for France and Belgium, and is the largest worker in carbon printing in the world.

It is not necessary, however, to enter into more extended comment here on the beauty of the results, as the reader will form his own opinion from an examination of the print which accompanies these pages.

Before concluding these introductory remarks, it may