Portraits and action poses grouped together on T206 sheets?
 

I've seen it discussed more than once here if the portraits and action poses
were grouped together on sheets and from what I have on the plate scratch
sheets I think whoever said that might be right.

As far as the printing goes I don't know if there would be a reason
for them to have them laid out that way maybe Steve B or one of the guy's with printing experience will chime in.

I've narrowed the plate scratch sheets down to four sheets or partial sheets
and they all have the portraits and action poses separated in different groups.

Sheet #1 is a double scratch sheet so there are two front's for this
sheet and all the portraits are grouped together on both ends.

The first sheet 1A has the only missing plate scratch from the #1 sheet on it, this scratch would be a match to
O'Leary portrait who is on the 1B sheet and based on the pattern I think this scratch should be found on a portrait.
Attachment 294645

The same back template was used on 1B and the scratches match the back
of 1A. This PD150 sheet is comprised of all Sweet Caporal 150/649 subjects
and contains all of the portraits that are in the subset of 34. Again all of
the portraits are on the ends.
Attachment 294646

Sheet #2 is the another sheet that the back plate was used on two sets of fronts.

2A is all action poses. This sheet has 11 of the 150 seies only cards on it (if you count Schulte front view as a 150 only which I do).
Attachment 294654

Sheet 2B is missing three scratches that match subjects from 2A but the rest
are all portraits.
Attachment 294655

Three of the five positions on this sheet match the Wagner strip that was
discovered in his uniform pocket when his house was sold.

I'm hoping one of the missing plate scratches is eventually found on Bowerman and I think the other missing scratch from this section will
be found on the subject that replaced Wagner on this sheet.

Here's a row on this sheet compared to the Wagner strip.
Attachment 294656

Here are a few examples of the matching pair scratches from this sheet.
All the scratches have a portrait with the exact scratch on an action pose
that matches it.
Attachment 294658Attachment 294659
Attachment 294660

Sheet #3 has four portraits and the plate scratches put them all together
in the middle of this sheet.
Attachment 294657

Sheet #4 puzzles me. I think it's definitely a partial sheet but I haven't been
able to link it to any of the other sheets. I don't know if the scratche(s) end
abruptly with Kleinow or if I just haven't found the other scratches which
would be odd because I have seen several examples for each subject of
the scratches on this sheet.
This partial sheet is all action poses.
Attachment 294663

I'm pretty sure that this sheet ends with Oldring on the left because I've seen
three Oldrings with this scratch and a big corner crop.

Here's two of the Oldring Crops with the same scratch.
Attachment 294664


I think this is quite a lot of evidence that the portraits and action poses
could have been grouped together.

Check your Bowermans it would be great if we could find one with this scratch.
Attachment 294669

Or one that matches the Wagner position, I'm thinking it could be Doc White
portrait.
Attachment 294670

Portraits and action poses grouped together on T206 sheets
 

Pat

Note that all 66 subjects on my hypothetical sheet** are "action" poses (except for four of the 6 super-prints......these 6 super-prints were originally
images from a very early 350-only series press run and were carried over to be included on this sheet).
The fact that the 66 subjects on this sheet were all printed with apple-green SOVEREIGN 350 backs tells us that it indeed is a valid sheet structure.

Several years ago, I pointed out (using this sheet as example) that the latter print runs of the 150 and 350 Series were the sheets in which American
Lithographic printed many of the action poses.


v.................................... Six super-prints ....................................v
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...erprints9x.jpghttp://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...obConDav9x.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...erprints9x.jpghttp://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...yLDoyElb9x.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...raDouDow9x.jpghttp://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...osLajLak9x.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...MurpNich9x.jpghttp://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...aMcInMul9x.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...lPfeReul9x.jpghttp://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...eySnoSta9x.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...trCYoSte9x.jpghttp://photos.imageevent.com/tedzan7...lWillWhi9x.jpg



** please note that the placement of the subjects on this sheet is somewhat arbitrary.



T206 Reference
.

Portraits and action poses grouped together on T206 sheets?

I believe it depends on the particular sheet.

I can't really think of a solid technical reason to group them or to not group them. A few ideas come to mind, but nothing solid enough to really get behind as it would depend on things I doubt we'll ever know.

The following is all pure conjecture.

Like how were the cards packed, both leaving ALC and going into the packs. Some cutting sequences would lead to having stacks of the same card, others would lead to a more random distribution. Which of those they wanted would maybe determine the plate layout. Was there any attempt at getting a decent distribution in a carton, or would a carton purchase get you 10 of the same pose?

Or it could be as simple as whoever made the art and masters preferring working on Portraits or more of an action shot. Action might have been done by more experienced workers as they sometimes added the entire background. Or it might have hinged on what was ready when they went to lay out the plates.

I try not to ponder these things too much, the solvable stuff is complicated enough!

Steve B

Pat,

The work and effort you are putting into this is incredible!

At the end of the day, there are probably dozens of sheet configuration variations. The scratch sheets you are putting together certainly seem to show at least a couple such configurations, while miscut cards with other players names on top suggest a different configuration. I'd imagine it's as simple as ... So and so got traded, pull him off, an throw another Cobb on the sheet.

I think where your work has the largest potential benefit is knowing who was printed together, at least at some point in time, where that point of time may be, and the size of the sheets .... which also may have varied. For example, are all of the scratches in PD150, also on PD350's? If so, this may suggest a late PD150 run/early PD350 run. If not, perhaps an earlier PD150 run. Do any of those same cards have scratches in EPDG or SC150 runs?

Its very interesting, but I think people looking for a singular answer are not going to find one.

The "plates" were actually limestone stones, some size x about 4 inches thick. Typically after use they were resurfaced and laid out for some other print job.

I've seen a handful of cards showing a bit of possible carry over between P150 and 350. Those show what I think are remnants of the deeper areas of scratching.
There's a lot of room to study aspects that haven't been looked at. Pat has also made a bunch of progress with other marks that are consistent, and may or may not appear on more than one back. I'd thought that the sheets for different brands would be different, but I think he's proven that isn't always the case, and other than grouping subjects by common features I haven't yet seen much solid proof that different brands had different sheet layouts.

A couple of the areas that could bear a bit of looking into.
Early vs later P150 sheets.
The Magie has some issues with the back on a few positions, which aren't simple damage, because the consistently match small differences on the fronts. (Yes completists, there's at least 6-8 different Magies. ) I haven't seen those faults on the back of any other P150's. Finding them would probably prove to be interesting.

P150 vs P350
Some of the P150 scratches may have been deep enough to still just barely show on P350. If that's what the marks are, the question becomes whether the plate was resurfaced and totally redone with new transfers, and it's just by chance the same one was used Or if only a small portion was redone at first, for instance they removed the 1 and replaced it with a 3 or replaced 350 with 150. That would require checking the position of the numbers relative to the rest of the back to see if any have a slight difference.

Separating the probably three different runs of 150's and 350's. Some cards show some indication that the masters were reworked at least once during each of the 150 and 350 series. It really needs a ton of work, identifying which subjects, and what reworking was done. That would take a lot of detailed scans.
I just finished doing a first draft of something similar for the 49 Leaf, and just hunting up passable scans of obvious differences on a 49 card set took a few days.

Steve B

It seems to me color could have played a role as well. You can see clear color patterns on the reconstructed sheets. It's especially noticeable with the way yellow backgrounds weave in and out of the columns. Blue too.