Marking time in April 2013

More about the woodburytype

To add to my terse mention of the woodburytype the other day, I bring you a paragraph of text, and a video.

The paragraph is from Richard Benson’s book The printed pic­ture [New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2008]:

The woodburytype plate was hard to make, but once done it could generate a lot of inexpensive prints. They curled ter­ribly and the borders were always a mess, from the excess gelatin squeezing out, so they were always mounted. The wood­bury­type used no silver, which saved money, and it could produce mono­chro­mat­ic prints in any color, ac­cord­ing to the pigment used. The prints were also never wet, so all the com­plex handling of wet paper was avoided. Most of them were colored to imitate albumen prints, so the viewers believed they were seeing a “real” photograph. The tech­nol­o­gy didn’t allow prints much bigger than eight by ten in­ches [20 x 25 cm], but these beautiful little prints never had to go into a hypo bath so they are remarkably permanent.

This video from George Eastman House shows the wood­bury­type printing process in action:

Pricing timber

I have scanned a pair of timber price lists from my col­lec­tion. See the PDFs here. They were produced in the 1930s by timber mer­chants in Queensland and New South Wales. They allow some interesting comparisons.

One example: The Sydney supplier (Vanderfield & Reid Ltd) offered many timbers imported from overseas​—​Oregon (Douglas Fir), Redwood, Yellow Pine, Sugar Pine and Hemlock from North America; Baltic Pine from Europe; Rimu and White Pine (kauri?) from New Zealand; Pacific Maple from Asia; Pacific Oak from Japan; and Gaboon Mahogany from Africa.

In contrast, almost everything sold by Hancock Brothers was cut in Queensland. The few imports came from America​—​Oregon (up to 60 feet long, while 40 feet was the maximum for Queens­land Pine); and Redwood shingles.

Zen raking

First thing in the morning. I’m on the verandah of the As­sis­tant Lightkeeper’s quarters. I can hear waves lapping the shore, sea birds calling, the wind in the palm fronds. At a distance, just audible, repeated strokes of a rake on sand.

Jenni and Wayne, the caretakers, rake the sand paths at Low Island. They remove fallen leaves and twigs, and mark the damp sand with a hatching of rake marks. They call it zen raking, with a laugh at themselves, but I sense this meditative task sets them up for the day.

The first visitors of the day arrive mid-morning. As they go from place to place their footprints make a dot-painting of their routes. By mid-afternoon they are back on the boat and away. The footprints stay overnight, blurred by wind and rain, for Wayne and Jenni to erase the next morning.