Austin Cooper: Collotype from the Portfolio PUBLICITE PRESENTE PAR A.M. CASSANDRE (L’ART INTERNATIONAL D’ AUJOURD’ HUI #12). Paris: Paris: Editions d’Art Charles Moreau, c. 1929. First edition [Austin Cooper, Grande-Bretagne / AFFICHE, Plate no. 34]. An Original anthology of modern advertising artwork selected by A. M. Cassandre. A collotype in good condition, with rounded corners, mild age-toning and wear to edges and a small clip to top corner.
Plate size is 9.875 x12.75 (25.0825 cm x 32.385 cm) and blank on verso. Printed by Heliotype (collotype) at Editions d’Art Charles Moreau in Paris.
The PUBLICITE portfolio consisted of 49 color and black and whiteplates selected by A. M.Cassandre to present an overview of Avant-Garde influences in the advertising arts (posters, typography, book design, announcements, etc.) circa 1929. A magnificent and scarce production produced for Charles Moreau’s L’ART INTERNATIONAL D’ AUJOURD’ HUI portfolio series.
Collotype (a dichromate-based process, also called Albertype, Artotype, Autotype, bromoil, Dallastype, Heliotype, Levytype, Paynetype, phototype, photoglyphic) is the most accurate and beautiful method of photomechanical reproduction yet invented. Collotype can produce results difficult to distinguish from actual photographs -- many old postcards are collotypes.
Collotypes have the advantage that they can render continuous graduations of tone without screen intervention. Making and printing of collotype plates is skilled and expensive work and the sensitized gelation surface is too delicate to produce more than two thousand impressions. For these reasons, collotype has been used for luxury publications and, since World War II, has been largely abandoned for other commercial purposes.
As a testament to its quality, many prints with an impressively high image resolution still remain from the Collotype era (circa 1880 to 1970) in perfect archival condition.
Collotype was consistently employed on a relatively small scale throughout most of the twentieth century as a specialist medium for the highest quality book illustrations and single-sheet fine art reproductions. Although its photographically accurate printing characteristics and exceptional colour qualities remain (even in the digital age) largely unparalleled, its economic viability was gradually eroded during the latter half of the twentieth century by faster and cheaper methods of print.
The ability of collotype to print in continuous tone without the use of a halftone screen enabled full colour images to be printed with far more fidelity than any of the subsequent screened, CMYK printing processes which dominate the print world today. Because of this it was able to achieve a wider colour gamut than is currently possible through digital imaging. A further advantage also lay in collotypes’ reliance on highly pigmented inks. These were far purer than modern offset litho inks, containing none of the synthetic additives now used to maintain maximum efficiency for high-speed commercial production.
Recommended reading: Studio Collotype by Kent B. Kirby and The Practice of Collotype by Thomas A. Wilson.
Austin Cooper (1890 – 1964) was born in Canada, but trained as an artist and practiced in Britain. He studied at the Cardiff School of Art from the age of thirteen, before winning a scholarship to the Allan-Frazer Art College, Arbroath from 1906 until 1910. In 1910 he moved to London, studying in the evenings at the City and Guilds School. He returned to Canada as a commercial artist, although this was interrupted by war service during the First World War in Europe.
In 1922 he settled in London and received the first of many poster commissions from London Underground. Over the next two decades he established his reputation as a top poster designer. After the 1920s his work became increasingly pictorial, and he produced work for the Empire Marketing Board, LNER (London North East Railway) as well as the London Underground. In 1943 he turned from his career as a poster artist to become a full time painter.
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