Today we are surrounded by colour printed images - from the pages of magazines to the humble baked beans tin - but there was a time when such images were an expensive luxury, available only to a wealthy elite.
Today we are surrounded by colour printed images - from the pages of magazines to the humble baked beans tin - but there was a time when such images were an expensive luxury, available only to a wealthy elite.
A new exhibition at Cambridge University Library explores the fascinating and beautiful history of the colour print, illustrating the technological development of colour printing with some of the finest examples of the art, drawn from the Library’s collections.
"Our exhibition takes you between the covers to look at highlights from colour printing before photographic techniques dominated the illustrated book. Religious works, scientific volumes and children’s books are all featured. Fruit and flora, beasts and babes, and breathtaking landscape are all revealed in a blaze of colour," said the Library’s Exhibitions Officer, AnneMarie Robinson.
The exhibition begins its story in 15th century with the earliest surviving example of colour printing - the 1457 Psalter printed in Mainz by Fust & Schoeffer. At this time printers used multi-colour blocks to imitate the manuscript illumination produced by medieval scribes.
We conclude in the 19th century, when technical innovations such as lithography brought colour prints to a mass audience through publications such as The Illustrated London News.
Other highlights include England’s earliest colour printed book, The Book of Hawking, Hunting and Heraldry produced in 1486; the work of J C Le Blon, a 17th century pioneer of full-colour illustrations, whose techniques drew on Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of the separation of colour; items from the Routledge Toy Book series illustrated by Walter Crane, Kate Greenaway and Randolph Caldecott and printed by Edmund Evans; George Baxter prints and lithographic designs by Owen Jones.
Beauty and the Book: Gems of Colour Printing will be on public display tomorrow (Tuesday 9 April 2002) until 14 September 2002 (closed August 26) at the Exhibition Centre, Cambridge University Library, West Road, Cambridge.
Opening hours: Monday to Friday 9am-6pm, Saturday 9am-4.30pm. Closed on Sundays. Admission is free.
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