Rapid electrotype was a huge and old company that made electrotype printing plates primarily for advertisers, often for use in newspaper ads. They had offices in Cincinnati, Chicago, New York, Detroit and Philadelphia.
There's also a link online to a discussion of a similar item showing one of the DiMaggios.
My guess since they made mass produced electrotypes for ads is that the proofs are their own in-house proofs to assure the individual electrotype was correct. Maybe something that was sent along with the electrotype?
I didn't find a patent for a proofing mat under their name on Google patents, so either the OCR got it wrong, or the patent was never issued.
None of which proves or disproves any connection between the proofs and any particular set. It's possible the Lumis set was made using commercially prepared mass produced electrotypes. I'd have to actually have one to know if it was electrotyped, and I don't.
Steve B
|