Product Code Database
The hectograph, gelatin duplicator or jellygraph is a printing process that involves transfer of an original, prepared with special inks, to a pan of gelatin or a gelatin pad pulled tight on a metal frame.
While the original use of the technology has diminished, it has recently been revived for use in the art world. The hectograph has been modernized and made practical for anyone to use.
The master is placed on the gelatin and spirits applied to transfer the ink from the master to the gelatin. After transfer of the image to the inked gelatin surface, copies are made by pressing paper against it.
When a pad ceased to be useful, the gelatin could be soaked with spirits, the ink sponged away, and the pad left clean for the next master.
Although the name "" implies production of 100 copies, in reality the gelatin process produced print runs of somewhere between 20 and 80 copies, depending upon the skill of the user and the quality of the original. At least eight different colors of hectographic ink were available at one time, but purple was the most popular because of its density and contrast.
Hectography dates from the 1860s.
The process, requiring limited technology and leaving few traces behind, has proven useful both in low-technology environments and in clandestine circumstances where discretion is necessary. In the early-20th century the process lent itself to small runs of school-classroom test-papers, church newsletters and science-fiction fanzines. Prisoners-of-war at Stalag Luft III (the scene of The Great Escape)Paul Brickhill's eyewitness account inaccurately describes the process as a mimeograph and at Colditz Castle during World War II used an improvised hectograph to reproduce documents for a planned escape attempt.
The Communist authorities in the Jiangsu–Anhui Border Area of China used the process for postage stamps in November 1948, produced in sheets of 35, with thirteen $50 values, six $100, twelve $200, two $300 and two $500 values.Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue Part 17
Hectography has also served, though not very extensively, as an artistic medium in printmaking. The Russian Futurism used it for book illustrations, and the German expressionist Emil Nolde made four hectographs.
Stephen King, in his book , recalls how he and his elder brother Dave used the process to create their newspaper, Dave's Rag.
Hectography also emerged in professional situations; in Macy's advertising department during the 1950s and 1960s, full-page newspaper-ad layouts were drawn with hectograph pencils and then duplicated on a hectograph to make file copies for future reference. Before the popularization of spirit duplicators and the mimeograph, there were mechanized hectography machines that used a drum rather than a simple flat tray of gelatin.
George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) describes a somewhat more subversive schoolboy publication:
|
|
