COLOR PRINTING, the art of repro ducing pictures, designs, letterpress, etc., by any of the processes of printing, in two or more colors. It may be divided into —(1) primitive color printing, as Japanese brushwork from color blocks; (2) chromolithographic printing, in which colors are superimposed by litho graphic processes (see LITHOGRAPHY) ; (3) off set printing in colors (see PRINTING) ; f4) typo graphic color printing, done from type or relief plates, by typographic mechanisms. As a sub division of typographic color printing, the tri color process of reproducing in natural colors by photo-engraving forms practically an art by itsel f.
Japanese Color Printing.-- The modern survival of primitive color printing is found in the brushwork from color blocks produced by the Japanese and Chinese. These are sold for a small price in the shops of Eastern cities. They represent the combined work of an artist, engra.ver and printer. The artist makes a brush drawing on paper of local manufacture pro duced. from rice or bark fibres, laying on the color.in masses. The engraver pastes this color drasving on a printing block, usually made of wild cherry (Yamazakura) wood. With chisels and gouges rudely resembling the tools of the V.Vestern wood engraver, he cuts the main out line of the design on the wood, thus malcing this the .key-block of the resultant picture. In cutting the blocic into relief he destroys the drawing, but the body tints show on the wood, to guide him in engraving blocics for the other colors. A proof of this first key-blocic is taken on paper, and transferred to another block, on which the red portions of the picture are re produced. A blue and a yellow, and perhaps other color blocks, are produced in the same way. Register.. or correct .superposition is secured by cutting an L nick ui one comer of the proof of the key-block, and of all reproduc tions, so that they can be laid in similar posi tion on all the blocks of a series. To prevent the blocks from warping, dovetailing is em ployed. The printer takes the set of color blocks, and with dampened bark paper proceeds to printing one color at a time, inking the block with a brush, dexterously laying on the sheet with the L nick to secure accurate position or register, and impressing the sheet on the block by rubbing, in a manner somewhat similar to the taking of a burnished proof by a modern engraver. The rubber is a ball of hemp thread.
Ground vegetable and mineral substances are used for color pigments. When all the colors are on, a wash of rice paste is sometimes added to give a brilliant effect. By such primitive methods the Japanese printer can produce about 100 to 125 impressions per hour. If the pictures are in four colors, he can thus print 25 to 30 complete copies per hour.
is accomplished typographically, either by two separate print ings, as in black and red ink; or by the use of a two-color press, on which the sheet is fed first to a form inked with one color, and then to a second form inked with another color. Thus the two colors are produced at one operation though not simultaneously. Booklets and cir culars, and sometimes sections of magazines are now commonly printed in two colors ren dering them more attractive. Duographs, or half-tones in two colors, are produced by this method.
(or Tricolor) As early as 1704, it was known that the three primary colors, yellow, red and blue, could be printed so as to produce theoretically all color combinations. Jacques Christophe le Blon, born in Frankfort in 1670, made beautiful three-color prints, which he styled mezzotints, and which sold for the equivalent of $125 to $165 each. In 1722 he published a book titled (II Colorito,) which demonstrated that he had a conception of the color theory. He kept his process a secret, but took it to London, where a company was formed that exploited it with considerable profit. The first American three-color printing by the modern half-tone process, from a relief block was the work of William Kurtz, and appeared as a frontispiece in the Engraver ond Printer, of Boston, in 1893. The modern tricolor process from half-tone plates mechanically made is the joint product of the photo-engraver and printer. The photo-engraver makes three plates of the one subject, using color-screens to shut out the other colors from each plate. These three plates, printed one in yellow, one in red and one in blue, superposed, on a typo graphic press, constitute the three-color pictures produced by commercial printers. The story of the development of this modern process is best told in the words of the following paragraphs by Frederick E. Ives, the most conspicuous and prolific inventor in this field.