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Posted By: jims

I know little about diamond stars. but a little more about printing. My dad was a pressman in the thirties and I remember him talking about some of the problems in printing four color work. Quality control was a little practiced commodity in many commercial shops. The registration problems you find in the diamond stars could be caused by any one of a number of variables. Most if not all printing then was done on letterpresses vs today's offset presses.
A lot of four color work was printed on one color presses, meaning that there was a drying time between each press pass.Some paper would actually stretch as it went through a press. Humidity in a non air conditioned shop could swell the paper. In short, many times by the last press pass, it would be impossible to register the last color to the first three. There are a variety of other things that could also have caused the registration problems. An imperfect science at the time.