The role of collotype printing in the present context deserves a page, because the use of collotype images, which emphasized the importance of visuality and materiality to heritage preservation, forever transformed the meaning of antiquities as a category in modern China1.
Collotype is a photographic process invented by Alphonse Poitevin in 1856. The collotype plate is made by coating a plate of glass or metal with a substrate composed of gelatin or another colloid and hardening it. Glass, which has a finer grain, is a more appropriate substrate than metal. Copper was used for some of the images in Famous Chinese Paintings, according to its editorial in the first issues. The substrate is then coated with a thick coat of dichromated gelatin and dried carefully at a controlled temperature so it breaks up into a finely grained pattern when washed later in cold water. The plate is then exposed in contact with the negative using an ultraviolet source which changes the ability of the exposed gelatin to absorb water later2. It was widely used for reproducing photographs and art works, and for printing postcards, until the cheaper process of offset lithography was developed at the beginning of the 20th century.
Compared to woodblock printing and lithography, collotype was superior in terms of its capacity for showing delicate tones and grayscale gradations. The subtle ink wash of a Chinese painting is impossible to capture with woodblock printing or lithography but can be successfully reproduced with collotype. But collotype technology also had disadvantages. First, the gelatin nature of the printing surface limited the number of prints that could be obtained from a plate, which made collotype more expensive than lithography. Second, lithography was capable of reducing the size of the object reproduced in exact proportion, and, accordingly, enabled the placement of several objects on one plate for the sake of comparison1.
The fragile nature of collotype plates is illustrated below by two prints from the same plate, which were published in two different editions of issue 19, the right one shows a diagonal scratch (or was the glass plate broken?).
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| From our issue 19 | From issue 19 of reference 1 |
The boxes below, reproducing an area 3.18mm in size on three prints, show the difference between the microscopic structure of collotype and halftone prints.
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| collotype | collotype | halftone |
Japan played an important role in the development of art preservation in 19th and 20th century China3. As mentioned in the context page, it was a source of inspiration in the development of a new approach to art in China. Di Baoxian and Zhang Jie, among many other influencial Chinese figures, spent time in Japan, and were impressed by the way the artistic heritage was preserved and promoted in that country. This included the technical side, as collotype reproductions had been published in every issue of the art periodical Kokka since its foundation in 1889.
Shanghai was the capital of the printing and publishing industry in China in the early 20th century. The collotype printing technique imported from Japan was developed by the art publishers starting in 1908. Technological competition between the commercial presses proved to be an important factor in the rush to develop this technique.
Bibliography
1. Cheng-hua Wang, New printing technology and heritage preservation; collotype reproduction of antiquities in modern China, circa 1908-1917, in Joshua A. Fogel (ed.), The role of Japan in modern Chinese art, escholarship, 2013, pp. 273-308.
(http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0w56p2zj)↩
2. Collotype, wikipedia.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collotype)↩
3. Joshua A. Fogel (ed.), The role of Japan in modern Chinese art, escholarship, 2013, 489 pages
(http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0w56p2zj)↩