PUNCH AND JUDY,
Beginning in October 1869, yet another paper on similar lines, ran a short but interesting career of twelve weeks, and continued, in a commonplace way, for a year or two longer. The reason the first dozen issues are worth notice here is that the illustrations are all by 'graphotype process' (which must not be confused with the far earlier 'glyptography'), and so appeal to students of the technique of illustration. The principle of the graphotype process, it is said, was discovered accidentally. The inventor was removing, with a wet camel-hair brush, the white enamel from the face of a visiting-card, when he noticed that the printing on it was left in distinct relief. After many experiments the idea was developed, and a surface of metal was covered with a powdered chalky substance, upon which the drawing was made with a silicate ink which hardened the substance wherever it was applied. The chalk was then brushed away and the drawing left in low but distinct relief on the metal-plate, from which electrotypes could be taken in the usual way. The experiment gained some commercial success, and quite a notable group of artists experimented with it for designs to an edition of Dr. Isaac Watts's Divine and Moral Songs, a most curious libretto for an artistic venture. In Punch and Judy the blocks are by no means bad as regards their reproduction. Despite the very mediocre drawing of the originals, they are nevertheless preferable to the cheap wood-engravings of their contemporaries. After its change, 'G. O. M.' (if one reads the initials aright), or 'C. O. M.,'contributes some average cartoons. When it first appeared, at least one schoolboy was struck with the curious difference of technique that the illustrations showed, and from that time onwards had his curiosity aroused towards process-work. Therefore, this lapse into anecdotage, in the short record of a venture otherwise artistically unworthy to be noticed here, may be pardoned.