First, I had decided in Offenbach to use my spare time entirely for the study of chemistry. Particularly did I want to learn everything that was known about color, that I might use stone for cotton-printing. I bought the best books and worked steadily, testing the teachings by experiment.
Second, I made many experiments with stone-ink, to find the very best composition. The ingredients which I utilized in course of the time were about as follows:—
Soap—a, common tallow soaps; b, Venetian soap.
B, wax.
C, tallow, butter, and other animal fats.
D, spermaceti.
E, shellac.
F, resins and Venetian turpentine.
G, gum elastic.
H, linseed oil.
I, the fat contained in chocolate.
L, various resinous products, such as mastic, copal, dragon's blood, gum elemi, quajac pensoe, etc.
Then I used various solvents besides the soap, such as—
M, vegetable alkalies, among them tartaric acid.
N, similar mineral alkalies.
O, animal lyes, spirits of sal ammoniac, and sal volatile with spirits of ammonia.
P, borax.
Q, various metallic solutions.
It is evident that with these substances an endless number of experiments can be made, not to count the variety of proportions. Certainly it is not exaggeration when I say that during that time and later I made many thousands of experiments, only to confirm my experience that accidentally I had discovered the best compositions during the first twenty or thirty investigations, and that my time after that had been wasted, unless I counted the knowledge I had gained of chemistry.
Thirdly, I made my first attempts at that time in the aqua-tint style, and also practiced printing with several plates, which I had begun previously under suggestion of Herr Steiner. The son of the Swiss idyllic poet, Gessner, was in London at that time and was a good friend of Herr Philip. He made some neat sketches for us in the crayon process, which I had invented in Munich immediately after my invention of chemical printing. I had exhibited the process to Professor Mitterer at that time, and he thought that it might become valuable for art.
Thus my residence in London was not unimportant for lithography. The complete lack of disturbance, the adequacy of all needed material, enabled me to discover more than I might have learned in Offenbach. I left England with a certain satisfaction, gained from the certainty that I had raised my art to a high degree of perfection.
I am satisfied even to this day that the world would have many masterpieces as the result, had I come into contact at that time with an enterprising art publisher who would have engaged the needed artists and undertaken interesting works. As it was, however, and as I shall show, circumstances forced me into untoward positions, so that little or no opportunity was left me to use my knowledge practically and in an important way.
Immediately on my arrival in Offenbach, I received the displeasing news that Herr Andre had sent Madame Gleissner to Vienna to claim the exclusive franchise for the new printing process, and to enter lawsuit against my mother, who had gone to Vienna with the same purpose.