News about A Brighter Vision: European Colour Printing 1450–1830, a project by Ad Stijnman
The past twenty years saw a decisive change in the study of early European colour prints. Before, focus was on 16th-century chiaroscuro woodcuts and 18th-century intaglio colour prints mainly. Recent studies have disclosed a much wider area of the use of colour in European prints and printing, challenging many earlier assumptions. The present Jacoba Lugt-Klever Fellowship, awarded to Ad Stijnman, is aimed at compiling a monograph on the history of European colour prints, book illustrations and ephemera, working title A Brighter Vision: European Colour Printing 1450 to 1830.
Discussed will be, among many others, antecedents of European colour printing, style and function of colour prints, materials and techniques, historical terminology, and developments through the ages. The study will be supported by a generous selection of illustrations of colour printed materials covering a range of subjects, passages from primary technical sources on colour printing processes, results of technical examination of objects, and quotes from historical contemporaries.
The two-year Fellowship (2024 & 2025) is supported by the Fondation Custodia and the RKD.
Updates of the project's developments
For the Contents of A Brighter Vision: European Colour Printing 1450–1830 see here (PDF, 79KB, update of 08 March 2025).
For a Glossary of Technical Terms see here (PDF, 160 KB, update of 28 March 2025).
For a General Chronology of European Colour Printing see here (PDF, 192KB, update of 14 March 2025).
For a Chronological Bibliography of Early Modern European Colour Printing see:
- Part I: Publications up to and including the Year 2000 (PDF, 660KB, update of 24 February 2024)
- Part II: Publications from the Year 2001 onward (PDF, 239KB, update of 24 February 2024)
Part I includes an introduction to the theme of the bibliography, and has Name, Title and URL indices on both parts at the end.
The separation at 2000/2001 is because research on the history of colour prints takes a new turn from the beginning of the 21st century.
Recent and forthcoming events
For earlier events on colour printing see Recent events.
Ad Stijnman, A Brighter Vision: European Colour Printing 1450–1830, summary presentation of the project for the Grafein Foundation, at the Centraal Museum, Utrecht (The Netherlands), Saturday 21 February 2026 (details forthcoming).
Recent and forthcoming publications
For earlier publications on the subject see Recent publications, under Colour printing history.
Ad Stijnman, ‘Not for the Feeble of Mind! Color-printed Illustrations in European Medical Literature, 1500–1850’, in Placing Prints: New Developments in the Study of Print, 1400–1800, ed. by Bryony Bartlett-Rawlings and Naomi Lebens, Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2024, pp. 117–140 (Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History; 74).
§ This essay discusses early modern European medical illustrations printed in colour that are held in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, in comparison with single-sheet artistic prints housed in the collection of the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum printroom in nearby Braunschweig, both in Germany.
For a description of the volume and its table of contents see: https://brill.com/edcollbook/title/62165?rskey=UspUgT&result=1.
Ad Stijnman, 'The Printshop of Jan Pietersz. van de Venne, Middelburg, 1623', in Maker Space: Creative Environments in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Colin Murray, Sophie Pitman, Tianna Uchacz, New York: Bard Graduate Center Press, (forthcoming 2025).
§ Discussion on references to trade, religion, craft, culture, and government in this printshop interior.
See: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo216866307.html.
Ad Stijnman, '"Jaune soufre & acide bleu": over Ensors etstechnieken', in Staten van verbeelding: Ensor en het grafisch experiment, exh. cat., Antwerpen: Museum Plantin-Moretus, 2024.
Exhibition: 28 September 2024–18 Januari 2025.
§ On the etching techniques of James Ensor (1860–1949), including printing in sanguine (red-brown) and on coloured fabric.
See: https://museumplantinmoretus.be/en/activity/states-imagination.
Ad Stijnman, 'Colour Letterpress in the Long 18th Century: A First Survey', in Printing Colour 1700–1830: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, ed. by Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025, pp. 73–83 (Proceedings of The British Academy; 263).
§ Includes: 'A bibliography of publications with colour-printed letterpress, 1697–1829', a list of annotated short-title descriptions of thirty prominent examples of books and periodicals with colour-printed texts.
For a description of the volume and its table of contents see: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/printing-colour-1700---1830-9780197267530?q=printing%20colour&lang=en&cc=nl#.
Ad Stijnman, 'Anatomy to Embroidery: Intaglio Colour-Printed Illustrations in European Books and Periodicals, 1700–1850', in Printing Colour 1700–1830: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, ed. by Margaret Morgan Grasselli and Elizabeth Savage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025, pp. 315–328 (Proceedings of The British Academy; 263).
§ Subjects discussed: Anatomy and pathology; Botany and zoology; Portraiture; Art and artistic instruction; Fashion; Fiction and poetry; Devotion and religion; Militaria and cartography; Palaeography; Archaeology and history; Travel, discovery, and ethnography.
For a description of the volume and its table of contents see: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/printing-colour-1700---1830-9780197267530?q=printing%20colour&lang=en&cc=nl#.
Ad Stijnman, 'Of Furm and Mulde: A Bibliography of Primary Sources on the Production of Stamping and Relief Printing Woodblocks, 1400–1700', in Printing Things, ed. by Elizabeth Savage and Femke Speelberg, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (forthcoming 2025).
§ The bibliography presents in chronological order the first annotated compilation of 31 textual and visual sources that were written, drawn, and printed to detail the production and printing of woodblocks in Europe from 1400 until c.1700, including sources on stamping fabric in colour and on chiaroscuro colour printing. Texts are transcribed, translated into modern English if in a non-English language, and annotated. Images of the production of wooden stamping and printing matrices are reproduced, described and annotated.
Ad Stijnman, 'European and Asian Typographic Printing Inks, 1200–1600: A Comparison', Chapter 12 in From Jikji to Gutenberg: The Origins of Book Printing from Cast-Metal Type, ed. by Cathleen A. Baker, Ann Arbor, MI: The Legacy Press (forthcoming 2026).
§ The Chapter includes an Appendix with an 'Annotated bibliography on the technical examination of printing ink in incunabula', with titles from 1940 to the present.
The similarity between early Korean and early German typography is printing from loose metal type. However, there are many fundamental differences between both processes. This chapter compares the different printing ink recipes they used: a water-based ink in Korea and an oil-based ink in Germany. It also includes a discussion on European red printing ink and black/red printing processes. By absence of contemporary documentation the discussion grounds itself on observation and on modern technical analyses of the inks and printing processes in the earliest Korean and German printed books. The aim is to define these earliest inks in more detail by looking at their principal constituents: pigments, binding media and possible additives. The antecedents of these inks are discussed and what possible changes may have been necessary to adapt earlier ink recipes to make them suited to print from metal type. All together this will support the discussion in how far both typographic processes may correspond or differ.
Ad Stijnman, 'Innovation, Revival and Re-Invention: Early European Colour Printing Processes in Perspective', in Rethinking Colour: Printing Colour and Painting Prints in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. by Karolina Mroziewicz, Małgorzata Łazicka, Leiden: Brill (forthcoming 2026).
§ Colour was an integral part of printmaking from 1400, first by hand-colouring prints inked in black and from the 1450s by colour letterpress. Next followed a period of experimentation with colour printing in both relief and intaglio. This paper discusses developments of colour printing techniques in Europe until 1600, placing these in perspective by comparison with works from earlier and later periods.
Ad Stijnman, '司馬 江漢 と 亜欧堂 田善 の 銅版画 の 技法 [= The Etching Techniques of SHIBA Kōkan and AŌDŌ Denzen]', in [Cool Oil Paintings: SHIBA Kōkan and AŌDŌ Denzen], ed. by KANEKO Nobuhisa, exh. cat., Fuchū, Tokyo: Fuchū Art Museum, (forthcoming Spring 2025).
§ In the course of the eighteenth century Japanese rangakusha (Holland scholars) studied Western sciences, thereby implementing it in their own scholarly system. Similarly, Japanese artists taught themselves Western art techniques such as drawing perspective and oil painting. In 1783 SHIBA Kōkan introduced etching and printing copper plates. Other printmakers modified this by applying locally available materials and AŌDŌ Denzen excelled in technical creativity, including printing on fabric and colour printing. For almost a century, until the arrival of Italian engraver Edoardo Chiossone in Japan in 1875, nearly a hundred Japanese artists created thousands of unique etchings independent from any training by a Western artist.
Ad Stijnman, 'Color Printed Cloth from the Teyler Workshop', for Premodern Printing on Fabric (working title), exhibition at the Newberry Library, Chicago, December 2026 to April 2027 (details forthcoming).