Woodburytype by Andrew Denoon Young Scottish Photographer, "Larch, Keil's Den, Largo", Andrew Young Photo, Woodburytype, 9 1/4 x 7 1/4 image size, 16 3/4 x 12 3/4" overall
Not a well-known photobook... John Jeffrey and Charles Howie. The Trees and Shrubs of Fife and Kinross. Leith: privately printed for private circulation, 1879. One of 100 copies.
The photographer Andrew Young of Burntisland traveled through these counties during the summers of 1875-78. In all, 29 Woodburytype photographic plates are mounted in this large folio. My copy has a letter inserted from a local forester sent to one of the land owners included in the book, updating him on some of the trees on his property.A Woodburytype is both a printing process and the print that it produces. In technical terms, the process is a photomechanical rather than a photographic one, because sensitivity to light plays no role in the actual printing. The process produces very high quality continuous tone images in monochrome, with surfaces that show a slight relief effect. Essentially, a Woodburytype is a mold produced copy of an original photographic negative with a tonal range similar to a Carbon print.
The process was introduced by the English photographer Walter B. Woodbury and was in use during the final third of the 19th century, most commonly for illustrating fine books with photographic portraits. It was ultimately displaced by halftone processes that produced prints of lower quality but were much cheaper.

17 x 13 x 1 in

10 lb