A Reassessment of Past Colour Collotype Printing Achievements as a Model for Current Digital, Archival Printing Practice

Colour collotype "at it's best", according to Kirby (1988) "is sufficiently good enough to reproduce both artwork and colour photography with a quality that truly approaches original in tone and hue". By examining some of achievements and precedents set by the now near defunct collotype industry, this paper will outline some of the principles pursued by the Centre for Fine Print Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol, for the creation of high resolution, archivally stable, digitally generated artists prints. In adapting the use of current colour management systems and continuous tone output techniques, the research has successfully demonstrated a means of producing digitally mediated images in fully pigmented colour on Ph neutral papers through the traditional collotype medium. This route has enabled some of the unique extended colour separation and retouching techniques once employed exclusively by the collotype industry to be re-created digitally. While this combination of old and new contributes to the limited variety of fully archival printing techniques currently available for museum quality printing, it also indicates how, by assimilating these techniques and forgotten standards, digital printing devices may also be designed to extend upon current standards of quality. The paper will define the unique characteristics of collotype, explain its non-standard colour printing techniques and describe how they may be re-created digitally. It will also outline how such working methods may be applied to assist contemporary digital printing practice.