Enfilade

From Oxford UP:

Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage, eds., Printing Colour 1700–1830: Histories, Techniques, Functions, and Receptions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), 448 pages, $185. Proceedings of the British Academy

Printing Colour 1700–1830 offers a broad-ranging examination of the rich period of invention, experimentation, and creativity surrounding colour printing in Europe between two critically important developments, four-colour separation printing around 1710, and chromolithography around 1830. Its 28 field-defining contributions by 23 leading experts expand the corpus beyond rare fine art impressions to include many millions of colour-printed images and objects. The chapters unveil the explosive growth in the production and marketing of colour prints at this pivotal moment. They address the numerous scientific and technological advances that fed the burgeoning popularity for such diverse colour-printed consumer goods as clothing, textiles, wallpapers, and ceramics. They recontextualise the rise in colour-printed paper currencies, book endpapers and typography, and ephemera, including lottery tickets and advertisements. This landmark volume launches colour printing of the long 18th century as an interdisciplinary field of study, opening new avenues for research across historical and scientific fields.

Elizabeth Savage is Senior Lecturer in Book History and Communications, School of Advanced Study, and Head of Academic Research Engagement, Senate House Library, University of London. In 2020–22, she was an Honorary Fellow at Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford University. In 2022–23, she was a Fellow at Linda Hall Library. Her research into pre-industrial European printing techniques, especially for colour, has won awards including the Schulman and Bullard Article Prize. Her latest book is Early Colour Printing: German Renaissance Woodcuts at the British Museum, and she co-edited Printing Colour 1400–1700. She regularly curates and contributes to exhibitions about print heritage, for example at the British Museum and Musée du Louvre. She teaches at London Rare Books School.

Margaret Morgan Grasselli worked for forty years at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, thirty as Curator of Old Master Drawings. Having retired in 2020, she then served as Visiting Lecturer in the department of History of Art and Architecture of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University (2020–22) and Visiting Senior Scholar for Drawings at the Harvard Art Museums (2020–23). An expert on French drawings, she is also an authority on French color prints of the 18th century. She organised the 2003 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Colorful Impressions: The Printing Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France, and was the editor and primary author of the accompanying catalogue.

c o n t e n t s

Introduction — Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage

Part 1 | Materials and Techniques Printing Colour in 18th-Century Europe
• Tools, Machines, and Presswork for Printing Colour in 18th-Century Europe — Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage
• Colour Printing Inks and Colour Inking in 18th-Century Europe — Elizabeth Savage

Part 2 | Relief Techniques: Letterpress, and Colour Woodcut
• Colour Letterpress in Europe in the Long 18th Century — Ad Stijnman
• Elisha Kirkall and His Proposals for Printing in Chiaroscuro, Natural Colours, and Tints, 1720–40 — Simon Turner
• Printing Chiaroscuro and Colour Woodcuts in Paris, Venice, and London c.1725–70 — Tico Seifert
• Bringing Colour to Books and Objects with Decorated Paper in the Long 18th Century — Sid Berger, Michèle Cloonan
• Colour for Commerce: Letterpress-Printed Ephemera in Britain, 1700–1830 — Rob Banham

Part 3 | Mezzotint and Trichromatic Printing
• The Politics of Process Mezzotint: Jacob Christoff Le Blon’s Reputation, 1700–89 — Elizabeth Savage
• From Colour Theory to Colour Practice: Printmakers in Pursuit of the Ideal Pigments in 18th-Century Europe — Dionysia Christoforou, Manon van der Mullen, and Victor Gonzalez
• Colouring the Body: Printed Colour in Medical Treatises during the Long 18th Century — Julia Nurse
• Colour Printing in Late 18th-Century Italy: Édouard and Louis Dagoty, 1770–1800 — Alice Nicoliello

Part 4 | Chalk, Pastel and Watercolour Manner, and Aquatint
• Printed Paintings and Engraved Drawings: Technical Innovations in Colour Printing in 18th-Century France — Margaret Morgan Grasselli
• Coloured Prints in Imitation of Old Master Drawings in 18th-Century Italy: Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder, Benigno Bossi, Francesco Rosaspina and their Contemporaries — Benedetta Spadaccini
• François-Philippe Charpentier and the Development of Aquatint in France in the 1760s — Rena Hoisington
• A Voyage pittoresque in Norway through Colour Prints, 1789–c.1815 — Chiara Palandri
• The Market for Colour Prints in Paris at the End of the 18th Century — Corinne Le Bitouzé
• Multiple-Plate Colour Prints and the Problems of Variant Impressions, Missing Plates, and Disappearing Inks — Margaret Morgan Grasselli

Part 5 | Stipple and a la Poupée
• English Colour-Printed Stipple Engravings, 1774–1800 — David Alexander
• Between Painting and Graphic Arts: Colour Printmaking in Russia, 1750s–1800s — Zalina Tetermazova
• Anne Allen, Jean Pillement, and the Development of à la poupée Printing in France — Geert-Jan Janse
• The Contribution of à la poupée-inked Colour Printing to Natural History Illustration in France, 1800–1870 — Karen Cook

Part 6 | Consumer Goods and Expanding Markets for Colour Printing
• Anatomy to Embroidery: Intaglio Colour-Printed Illustrations in European Books and Periodicals, 1700–1850 — Ad Stijnman
• Early Dye-Patterned Colour on Calico in Europe, 1600–1840 — Susan Greene
• Printed Wallpaper in England in the Long 18th Century — Phillippa Mapes
• Colour Printing on English Ceramics, 1751–70 — Patricia Ferguson

Part 7 | Technical Experimentation and Industrialisation
• William Blake’s Colour Printing: Methods and Materials — Michael Phillips
• Innovation and Tradition in Early 19th-Century Colour Printing — Michael Twyman
• The Beginnings of Commercial Colour Printing in Europe, 1835–40 — Michael Twyman