Questions about Woodcuts and CDV/Cabinet Cards & Old Judge cards
 

I've really been enjoying researching 19th century baseball, but I have a long ways to go. I do have some questions if someone(s) wouldn't mind learnin' me a thing or two :)

1) How exactly were the woodcuts made? I get that they were carved in wood, the uncarved away wood part got ink and then stamped on paper, but how were these carved? Was this done by hand, or was an actual photograph somehow transferred onto the wood itself?

2) Someone earlier mentioned each woodcut could be considered an original work of art ... but why?

3) For Harper's Weekly, why didn't they just show photographs instead of the woodcuts? I see some woodcuts at the bottom that say "From a photograph by the photo-mechanical printing company". Clearly, the technology was there to create the photograph in the first place - was it just not able to be replicated?

4) Speaking of replication, how on earth did Old Judge replicate images then, if Harper's Weekly couldn't? Clearly there are multiple copies of each card, and they appear to be photographs. Did they just take a bunch of pictures at once?

5) As for CDVs / Cabinet cards, how were these replicated? Surely there were more than one each of these.

I'm sure I have more questions and I'll keep researching, but I'd love to hear from some of you knowledgeable folks here!

Joe Gonsowski and other Old Judge experts will be able to give you many more details, but OJs and similar photographic cards consist of an albumen print glued to cardboard. Albumen prints were one of the first commercially viable methods for making many prints from a single photographic negative; the paper was very thin, so each print had to be individually glued to a piece of cardboard so it could be put in a cigarette package. Such prints could not be made on newsprint, which was used to print newspapers such as Harper's Weekly, and the technology to reproduce photographs on newsprint did not yet exist in the 1860s-1880s. So if they wanted a picture they had to use other technologies that were compatible with printing presses, such as woodcuts.

CdV's and cabinet cards were made from negatives, which could be duplicated. There was degradation, however, each time they were used, so they had a limited shelf life.

Almost all Cdv's and cabinets have the photographer's name and contact information on the reverse, and it's not unusual to see "duplicates available upon request". But don't contact them now for copies, I think they may be out of business.:)

And woodcuts were made by engraving wooden blocks and then inking them, although it was probably a bit more complicated than that.

In the artworld, prints are considered 'original' (handmade as I call them), if the graphics are made directly by hand or handheld tool into the printing plate, and the print is printed directly from that printing plate. If you hancarve a block of wood and print from that block, you made an original, handmade print. It's the printing equivalent of an original painting or sketch, and if you buy a thousands dollar Picasso lithograph or Rembrandt etching, that's what you are getting.

An example is if your kid makes a linoleum cut print in art class, where you carve the design into a piece of linoleum, ink it up and print it onto a piece of paper. That's an original. If you scan it or photograph and print out a digital copy, that's a reproduction.

In the late 1800s, there was the modern way of reproducing photographs, sketeches and paintings by translating the original art in to a dot-matrix pattern. They take a photo of the sketch or painting, and make the reproduction on the printing plate with that. That's the way modern baseball cards, CD covers, posters, newspapers and magazines reproduce graphics. And if you look under a microscope, you will see the dot pattern.

Before this process, newspapers and magazines couldn't reproduce photos or paintings that way, and so all the graphics in publications are orignal, handmade works of art.

So photographs have been around since 1839, but the in practice technology to realistically reproduce them didn't start until the 1890s. The first photomechanically reproduced baseball card is the 1893 Just So Tobacco. The 1880s and earlier 1880s Allen & Ginters, Red Stocking Tobacco and trade cards are handmade prints.

GREAT input here, everyone! Thanks so much! So, if I'm understanding properly, Old Judge, CDVs and Cabinet cards were made from negatives. Negatives could produce several, but not an unlimited amount, as they would degrade over time. Perhaps there simply aren't that many cards of each player in the Old Judge set then? Man, I think I've gotta get my hands on that Old Judge book by Jay and the other gentleman who wrote it (I think there were two people?)

As for newspapers, they were using woodcuts and stamping them basically by hand? They couldn't use pictures (until the dot-matrix patterns was invented) because they couldn't reproduce the images due to the paper needed. Do I have it right so far?

Looking forward to hearing from others as well!

There were three people: Jay Miller (oldjudge on Net54), Joe Gonsowski (Joe_G. on Net54), and Richard Masson (not on Net54).

Ah! Ok. I think I also got the Jay I was thinking of wrong, too :)

It wasn't really the paper per se, so much as the method of reproduction. Albumen prints were made by exposing a photographic negative to a piece of specially coated paper, whereas newspapers in the late 19th century were printed by letterpress printing, in which a bed made up of movable type is inked and pressed onto a sheet of paper. I'm not sure if it would have been possible to make an albumen print on newsprint, but even if it was, it would have had to be done completely separately from the process of printing a newspaper. A woodcut, on the other hand, could easily fit among the type in a letterpress type bed, as people had been doing from the invention of movable type and the printing press in the 15th century.

The negatives themselves last a long time, as long as there is no wear from handling etc. But most of what was printed was a different size than the negative, and adding the company name meant duplicating the negative. each duplication causes a little less sharpness in the image. How much depends on the skill of the person doing the job.

The woodcuts were sort of printed by hand. Even around the time of the earlier ones the presses were pretty fast. and by the 1870's a major publication would probably be oriented on a steam powered press.

The best woodcuts were sometimes called wood engravings, and were cut into the end grain of a maple block. It was durable enough, and could be carved in enough detail.

Thanks Steve! Great info.