Old coin picture printing plate (Clark Gruber related)
dcarr
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I bought this at a recent local show as a neat addition to my Colorado exonumia collection.
A lot cheaper than one of the coins !
It is a printing plate for an older book (yet to be determined):
Copper printing plate mounted on wood backing:
Stamped "88" between the coin images:
Direct reflection off the printing surface shows the image (reversed):
Old pencil writing on the back "1860 $10 / C. G. & C." (Clark Gruber & Company):
Imprinted on the side "88" with logo "I.P.E.U." (International Photo-Engravers Union [of North America]):
The I.P.E.U. was formed in 1904 and merged with another union becoming the L.P.I.U. in 1964.
That establishes a date range for this plate.
Close-up of "half-tone" printed image would look something like this:
.
The diameters of the images printed by this plate are the same as the original coin.
.
Comments
An unexpected survivor. Nice.
Possibly an auction catalogue? Lot 88?
Intriguing Colorado gold!
bob
It looks more like something that would be used for embossing paper rather than printing. It seems to have too much relief to have been useful for printing.
It is actually very flat except for the incuse dots (which would apparently hold ink before transferring it to the printed surface).
@dcarr
That is very interesting. A lot of time and effort when into making them. Hopefully, there are some examples of what was printed from them in an archive somewhere.
Nope, that is a photogravure plate that was etched using a technique in printing to paper. Each dot held ink which was transferred to paper. In a previous life, I was in that union when I worked at the NY Daily News, Brooklyn plant where we produced the Sunday funnies and the color magazine section. Nice find especially that coin image. That plate is still usable, ink it up and press it to paper. Peace Roy
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One never knows where coin exonumia may be found....Interesting piece Dan, thanks for showing us. Cheers, RickO
88 might be the union local
Martin
Good thought. Find out where that local is/was and you might find the publisher.
That is just "way cool". Even more so because it includes the "Stamp".
Pete
Amazing find! That looks really cool. Something to hold and examine.
You are building up quite the Colorado Territorial collection
I agree. The fact that 88 was stamped next to the union logo supports that theory nicely.
Great post. How cool!
Would love to see you post a photo of a paper reproduction using this.
This will help date it to 1964 or before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Photo-Engravers_Union_of_North_America
Nice research @CaptHenway. Thanks
Is there smoe kind of product coming out of this down the road? ;-)
I had already done the date research
I concur.
I saw something somewhat similar to this years ago on E-Bay....
I saved the image somewhere....however in this case it
for a J.J. Conway & Co. Eagle
Very cool piece, thanks for posting!