Question about T206 history

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Steve, what would the 'original art' have looked like? None of it has ever surfaced, so I always figured that, other than proofs, everything else in the process was time-sensitive. Of course, the type 3 Coupons kind of destroy that theory...don't they?

At a minimum?

there would have been the original photo, probably whited out around the player.
A halftone negative of the player.
A series of painted pieces, possibly on acetate of each color.
Negatives of those, some just negatives, some halftone.
(The more modern process took photos through differentfilters, to get the cymk halftones.)

Those would have been used to make a stone master for each subject and color that they would then use to print transfers. Basically the single color image in a tarlike ink printed onto tissue paper.
(The more modern process uses the negatives to produce the plate directly-the current stuff is direct from computer to press with the plates beng made on the press itself.)

Those transfers would be used to lay out the plates -Either metal plates or stones. One for each color.

Stuff like Nodgrass, Dopner, and the other caption varieties are caused by the transfer not transfering properly.

What would have been saved within the company would have been the photos, halftones and the original art wether on acetete or usually illustration board. They might have retained extra transfers if any were made.

So to print the T213s of all kinds all they needed was the original art. New negatives and transfers could be made at any time. And for T213-2 and 3 they obviously made new masters for blue and brown since the captions were in blue rather than brown. I don't have any T213-3 to compare and see if they made new masters for all the colors. I think the -1 were from the same masters and -2 used the same masters for all but brown and blue.

How long they would have saved the original art is variable. It could have stayed in the company files for decades, the negatives would have been kept for maybe a few years. An exception would be an ongoing job like a customer ordering the same printed form for several years.

Some customers want the original art back. I did a drawing of my high school for the yearbook and got the original back -Cut in half ! Since they'd used it on the pasteup for two pages. (lazy, we'd have made a big negative and cut that in half leaving the art intact. But the yearbook company was high volume and we were higher quality. ) The next year the shop I worked for made a few prints from the same art including the years the school had been under renovation. When they had the official re-opening all the staff got one plus the dignitaries got one on nicer paper. Somewhere I still have a couple hundred of them. Yes, official re-opening, we went to school through the renovation. Including a math class held over the pile driver driving piles for the elevator shaft.

Steve B