George Brannon: bringing 200 year old print plates back to life
George Brannon was an eminent Victorian artist, engraver and print maker, best known for his beautifully detailed prints of Isle of Wight scenes. Between 1820 and 1862, Brannon captured the Island’s natural scenery and famous landmarks through the Georgian and Victorian periods and created a popular collection of work “Vectis Scenery”, which was published in 1821. Brannon has since become a sought after artist for collectors, and local island historian, Ken Hicks, is a specialist on the subject of his work who recently unearthed a large collection of Brannon’s original etching plates.
An original George Brannon etching: ‘View from Shanklin Down’
When the author and history consultant Tim Wander first brought me the Brannon plates with the idea of printing from the 200 year old copper plates he was doubtful that they would reveal anything as the images were obscured by a heavy coating of a black substance – presumably some sort of varnish to prevent the oxidation of the metal.
To me it looked like stop-out varnish which is used to protect plates from the acids used in etching. I dabbed cautiously at the corners with a variety of solvents and it lifted easily using turpentine. I could see immediately that there was plenty of detail and depth of engraving on some of the plates while others were very worn and faint. A gentle clean with soft cloths removed the last traces of the varnish but also showed that there was a lot of oxidative damage in places on the copper plates and pitting and rusting on the steel plates. Burnishing and polishing may have improved these but it was a risk too far to try this. Where the marks occurred around the edges I was able to minimise them by applying whiting after inking as I will describe later.
With the plan to reprint a series of Brannon’s work for an exhibition at North House in Cowes in October 2022, I was keen to try and find the original paper on which to print the ‘new’ Brannons but the Mill in Hampshire that he used is long gone. St Cuthbert’s Mill in Somerset which makes the well know Somerset etching papers proved a good match for colour and that is what I decided to use for all the prints. (Belatedly I found Brannon used a much lighter weight of paper for the Vectis Books which I didn’t realise until I saw the originals at the exhibition.)
Paper for engravings and etchings need to contain plenty of cotton rag in them as they are used wet and printed under pressure through the press. The fibres give the paper strength and flexibility to mould to the surface of the plate and into the tiny inked incisions picking up the ink and reproducing the image.
When it came to printing the plates I researched traditional Victorian inks and went down a fascinating rabbit hole involving the risks of boiling linseed and the historical ingredients of inks over time1. Much as I wanted an authentic result the time would not allow such a digression as ink making and I settled on a ready-made oil based printing ink(‘Strong Black’ from Intaglio printmakers).
The process of making an engraving on copper means the image is incised into the surface of the plate. To print the image positively therefore requires that the ink must be pressed down into those marks with the excess on the surface wiped off, this is called an intaglio print. Specifically the ink is applied thickly over the plate using a squeegee or piece of card or a traditional leather inking dollie - the image is obliterated by the thick ink layer.
Then fabric scrim or tarlatan (a type of cotton cheese cloth) is formed into loose pads and used to wipe the surface of the plate in a smooth motion the intention being both to spread the ink into all the grooves and then to evenly remove the ink gradually revealing the image. The scrim pads are rotated until they are saturated with the ink and are reused for many printings. The heavily inked pieces are used at the beginning of the wipe and progressively cleaner pieces are substituted. Wiping this way slows down the process and means there is less chance of over wiping. Heavy handed or quick wiping easily leads to too much ink being removed which results in faint prints. Once most of the ink is removed and the image is clearly seen on the plate, polishing using small pieces of tissue paper cleans it up further. This part of the polish can be more nuanced, clearing away ink in specific areas which need to be lighter.
To print the Brannons I tried not to get too much ink on the edges of the plates where most of the deep rust and pits were located. On the other hand, the plates all feature very fine lined borders and tiny lettering which needed to be strongly inked in order to be legible. It was decided that the signs of age on the plates were as integral as the images themselves, we would try and minimise them but not worry about them too much, so after polishing the plates with the tissue I did a partial hand-wipe. This entailed taking whiting dust,(chalk) in the palm of one hand and rubbing the heel of the other hand in it. The excess dust was clapped away and the second hand was then used to gently swipe around the edges of the plate and very lightly over it absorbing more ink and coating the deeper pits in a layer of dust which acts as a partial barrier to the ink touching the paper.
While the preparation for printing was going on, sheets of pre-torn paper were soaking in a shallow water bath. The inked plate was placed face-up on the press bed, the paper removed from the bath and blotted before being carefully lowered onto the inked plate. Press blankets were gently lowered and the whole package smoothly rolled through the press. The resulting prints are left to dry interleaved with clean paper and weighted to keep them flat.
Now that the exhibition is over the plates will go back into careful storage. Each plate will be wiped over with solvent to remove any traces of ink and they will be heavily covered in a waxy acid resistant ground before being repainted with the stop out varnish similar to that which I removed at the beginning before being replaced in their labelled paper envelops.
