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Document number: 7819
Date: 21 Feb 1859
Dating: date estimated from first post mark
Postmark: South Shields 21 Feb 1859
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: ELLIOTT Robinson
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: Acc 20712 (envelope)
Last updated: 26th January 2015

3 Challoner Terace
South Shields<1>

Sir/

May I request the favour of your kind permission to make an experiment in your new & very beautiful process of Photographic Engraving. <2> Should I (by your permission) on trial think it would prove useful in conjunction with a process of which I am Patentee– <3> perhaps you would oblige me by saying on what terms I might work it commercially

I remain Sir Yours respectfully
Robinson Elliot

W. H. Fox Talbot Esqr

[envelope:]
[across top, in WHFT's hand:] Robinson Elliot - Sth Shields
W. H. Fox Talbot Esq
Lacock Abbey
Wiltshire


Notes:

1. This reads like it is the writer's first letter to WHFT and this is the earliest envelope from Elliot that has been traced.

2. It is likely that the writer means WHFT's 1858 photoglyphic engraving process. Photographic engraving was patented by WHFT in 1852. If the writer was correct in his terminology, then this letter would date to some six or seven years earlier.

3. This was probably his Patent no. 2295, sealed 1 September 1857: "Improvements in photography by which the lensular defects of the present processes of taking photographic prints are avoided, and impressions are obtained of any size." By 'lensular' defects, Elliot meant the characteristic of photographic materials to be overly sensitive to blue light, thus reproducing greens, reds and yellows too dark. To overcome this, he proposed projecting a negative and making a hand-drawn monochrome rendering, adjusting the tonalities, and then using this new negative to produce prints. This of course had no relation to WHFT's goal of exactly reproducing nature without the intervention of the artist's hand.

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