1910 Printing Stone

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Posted By: <b>BobbyBHockey</b><p>Hey Guys,<br /><br />I know that you may not be interested in picking up the Beckett Hockey Card Monthly but I have written a very significant article about an amazing hobby find.<br /><br />The article is about the C56 1910 hockey card original Printing Stone. It has all the hockey names, numbers and back card design plus it also has the C60 Lacross names and back card design.<br /><br />Just thought it would be an interesting read for 5 bux. Many may not have ever seen a printing stone from an early tobacco issue and I don't know if there has ever been a discovery of one in the whole hobby?<br /><br />BobbyBHockey<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://www.network54.com/Realm/tmp/1183503226.JPG">

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Posted By: <b>Jon Canfield</b><p>How exactly is a printing stone used?

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Posted By: <b>BobbyBHockey</b><p>Jon,<br />Basically, the stone was inked in the specific areas to be printed and then it would be pressed together with a whatever paper/cardboard stock that was used for that issue. <br /><br />Bobby

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Posted By: <b>Hal Lewis</b><p>Wow, cool!<br /><br />That's how they made LITHOGRAPHS.<br /><br />Ink on a stone, not metallic print plates.<br /><br />Learned this while writing my book, but had never seen a stone before. Looks damn heavy!

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Posted By: <b>BobbyBHockey</b><p>Yes, its 11 ¼ x 9 ¼ x 2 ¼ and it weighs about 25lbs!

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Posted By: <b>Zeenut</b><p>Here is a C60 back. You can see the design on the plate. Pretty cool!<img src="http://www.network54.com/Realm/tmp/1183557395.JPG">

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Posted By: <b>BobbyBHockey</b><p>From the stone...<br /><br /><img src="http://www.network54.com/Realm/tmp/1183558994.JPG">

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Posted By: <b>Jim Newman</b><p>That is one of the coolest things I have ever seen!! SO Amazing!

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Posted By: <b>barrysloate</b><p>Currier and Ives, the most famous lithographers of the 19th century, used stone lithography to make their color prints.

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Posted By: <b>davidcycleback</b><p>For modern cards, lithography is done using sheets of metal. The original way to use heavy stones.<br /><br />Though stones are no longer used for mass market commercial items, you can take art classes where you learn how to make stone lithographs-- with real, live stones. Some think stone lithography produces better colors/images.

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Posted By: <b>Paul</b><p>So would the "original printing plates" that Woody Gelman and his friends used to make T206 Wagner and Plank cards in the 1950s look like this stone?

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Posted By: <b>barrysloate</b><p>T206's are not stone lithography. I would assume they were printed using metal plates.

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Posted By: <b>davidcycleback</b><p>I agree with Barry, in that I assume the T206s were printed with metal plates not stones. For the average card collector, it's not a big issue to mull over. Lithography is lithography whether the printing plate is made out of stone or metal.

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Posted By: <b>scott fandango</b><p>Barry, a bit more info as i have done much research in the process due to my T201 collection....<br /><br />Actually Ives used a little different method then the simple stone lithograph.....As a boy, Ives was apprenticed to a printer at the Litchfield Enquirer, where he became interested in photography. By the time he was 18 years old, he was in charge of the Cornell University photographic laboratory. While there, he developed an early halftone process using a gelatin relief. He continued to improve this process, and in 1881 he worked on the first commercial production of halftone printing plates using his method; in 1885 he introduced an improved halftone screen. <br /><br /> ...Take for instance the T201 Mecca double folders, one of the first cards to use the new halftone relief process, and also the first to have stats on the back, first to fold and have to images-----simply a revoltuionary issue....<br /><br /> they were made using a state of the art printing process known as COLOR HALFTONE RELIEF...Before these, most cards were made using the wood (or stone) engraving process to lay several colors on paper.......The T201, frequently confused as lithographs, are in fact halftone reliefs, not lithography....this is more easily seen using a 10X loupe, as you can see the Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black dots making up the halftone image<br /><br />the true name for the type of card is Chromoxylography....it was an off shoot of the Photomechanical Printing process invented by Frederick Ives of Cornell University.......the "ives Process" as it was known at the time used crossline halftone engraved electroplates to produce images.... this process revolutionized American Publishing because before this, each image took many many hours to create using wood etchings and was expensive....<br /><br />...this new process made it much cheaper, quicker and easier to produce images...now Publishers could include illustrations, cover art, and many others graphics that were once reserved for only the most expensive books and posters....<br /><br />Eventually this process of printing made its wat to the baseball card field in the early 1900's.... the American Tobacco Company, having now to compete with Turkish Cigarettes (no cards were made from 1895 to 1909 because the Tobacco companies had a Monopoly and there was no need to add cards to compete--the monopoly was broken in 1908 under the Sherman Antitrust ACT), decided to make their brands of cigarettes more attractive and included color cards...the first was 1911 Mecca Brand double folders, T206, T205,the T3 Turkey Red Cabinets followed by 1912 Hassan Brand Triple folders....The "mecca , Hassan and Turkey Red" were Turkish style names to try to compete with the Turkish (camel) Brands<br /><br />.....Another interesting Tidbit...Since the Library of Congress defines a cigarette card as " a 19th century mounted photograph", technically this in not a cigarette card even though they were distributed in packs of Mecca Cigarrettes of the AMerican Tobacco Company....the front of the card was not attached to the back like t206, this card was created by printing on the back and front to create the unique shared legs aspect....<br />

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Posted By: <b>barrysloate</b><p>Thanks Scott for that information.