Casgliadau Arlein

Letter to Emma Llewelyn from Henry Talbot regarding engravings he had made and advising her on printing techniques. Letter dated 2 Nov. [1858]

see comments for transcription by Demonfort Uni (http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/letters)

Transcript of letter:
Lacock Nov 2d. My dear Emma The engravings have all been made by myself without the assistance of any person but they were printed at the establishment of Mr Brooker 78 Margaret St Cavendish Square I never operate upon a negative of any kind, but only upon positives, which may be either paper or glass Of the two, glass is best And of glass photographs those are best in which the lights are transparent so that you can see distant objects through them, and those are worst in which the lights are like ground glass, confusing distant objects.

Steel plates must always be kept coated either with wax or tallow, which is put on in a moment and taken off almost as quickly They cannot be trusted even a single day, unless well wrapped in dry paper, because a rust spot is fatal to them & cannot be got rid of, or burnished out, without much difficulty. You say you have a very nice printing press, do you mean a rolling press for copperplate printing? It is a difficult thing to do well, I do not attempt it myself but send all my plates to Mr Brooker in London to be printed I don’t know whether there are any copperplate printers at Swansea, if so it will be convenient. If you wish to see impressions of your work taken immediately, I think you should have a workman who is used to it, for it is a particular art, to ink the plates well, only acquired by long practice, and moreover it is quite unsuitable for ladies I wished very much to give Ela and Rosamond some lessons in the art, that they might be able to assist you, but something has always prevented me, thus for example, Monday, the ladies all day at Bath. Tuesday, friends in the house all day, &c &c. so that I am afraid they will know but little of the manipulation, even if I succeed in giving some lessons on the two remaining days tomorrow and Thursday. I remain Your affte cousin Henry Talbot

Wednesday. It was the same again today and ditto repeated. The ladies had a succession of visitors from Bowood, and all my time also occupied by a pressing request from the Editor of the Photographic News for a duplicate Engraving He fancied 6000 copies could be taken from a single steel plate, and now he finds they cannot. Tomorrow I really hope there will be leisure for a lesson.