Adelaide Gallery <1>
4 Janry 1842
My dear Sir,
I have tried several plates, copy [sic] of lace, & I have spoiled them in the Electrotype process. <2> I have one now in the apparatus & it seems to go on satisfactorily. At all events I shall try until I have succeeded & shall lose no time in forwarding you a good specimen by post as soon as I have one,
I remain, My dear Sir, Yours respectfully
A. Claudet
Lacock Abbey
Notes:
1. Adelaide Gallery, Strand, London: Gallery of Practical Science; site of Antoine Claudet’s photographic studio.
2. Electrotyping was a manufacturing method for producing facsimiles that grew up concurrently with photography, having been announced by Moritz von Jacobi in St Petersburg at the end of 1838. A mould was formed from an original (such as a printing plate) and this mould was made electrically conductive by brushing with graphite; electricity could then be used to deposit copper in this mould, thus duplicating the original. In the printing industry, it eventually supplanted the stereotype process, where a paper maché mould was employed to make duplicate plates. [See Larry J Schaaf, Sun Pictures Catalogue Twelve: Talbot and Photogravure (New York: Hans P Kraus, Jr, 2003), pp. 40–41].