Recent projects
Testing Friend Color and Chromashine pigments for Toyo Aluminium K.K. for use in oil-based printing inks.
Copperplate etching printed with Chromashine colours on St Cuthbert black paper.
SEM-image of Chromashine gold and purple pigments ground to printing inks and mixed. Flakes are about 10 micron in diameter. Gray lines are paper fibres.
Etching and printing techniques of Rembrandt van Rijn.
Ad Stijnman, 'Dans l'atelier du maître: les techniques de gravure de Rembrandt', in Jaco Rutgers, Ad Stijnman, Rembrandt graveur: la comédie humain, Grenoble: Éditions Glénat, 2019, pp. 28–39.
Details of Le Blon prints showing trichromatic (three-colour) printing, the order of the colour plates (blue-yellow-red) and over-printing with additional black and white inked plates.
Jacob Christoff Le Blon and Trichromatic Printing, comp. by Ad Stijnman, with a contribution by Helen Wyld, ed. by Simon Turner, 2 parts, Ouderkerk aan den IJssel: Sound & Vision Publishers, in co-operation with The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2020, 2 parts in full colour (The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700).
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Comparison of three copies in two states of a Woman with a Child in front of Classical Architecture by Marcello Fogolino to decide, on their request, which state the copy in the Dresden printroom is; the print is a drypoint with dotting – not an etching as I stated in my Engraving and Etching 1400–2000, pp. 218–219. The lines are only shallow causing irregular instead of continuous ink deposits in the impressions, probably due to coarse pigment particles in the ink; the copies in Amsterdam and London are first states, the copy in Dresden (left) is a worn second state with additional drypoint lines. The detail below of the Amsterdam copy shows white lines within the (grainy) ink deposits. These white lines are the inkless tops of the burrs raised in scratching the drypoint lines, ink was held on both sides of the burrs. The brown lines are drawn with pen and iron gall ink, this ink being discoloured from blue-black to brown over time.
Lit.: Gudula Metze, Ars Nova, frühe Kupferstiche aus Italien: Katalog der italienischen Kupferstiche von den Anfängen bis um 1530 in der Sammlung des Dresdener Kupferstich-Kabinetts, Petersberg: Imhof, 2013, pp. 246–247, no. 190.
Comparison of five copies of the gores of a Waldseemüller world map, after which (together with advise by others) C17 was taken out off the auction; copies C5, JFB and Of are printed from the original woodblock; copies BSB and C17 are presumably nineteenth-century reproductions after copy JFB. Read an article about the map in the New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/10/arts/design/why-experts-dont-believe-this-is-a-rare-first-map-of-america.html.
Gathering a collection of some 110 different black pigments, for mutual comparison and testing their possible use in intaglio printing ink.
Identification of an until recently unknown blockbook (Germany, c.1457) in the collection of the Herzog August Library, Cod. Guelf. 1189 Helmst. Go to the online database Virtuelles Kupferstichkabinett and search for ‘1189 Helmst’ to see all printed pages here: http://www.virtuelles-kupferstichkabinett.de/de/.
Lit.: Ad Stijnman, ‘Ein unbekanntes Blockbuch in Cod. Guelf. 1189 Helmst. der Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel’, Gutenberg Jahrbuch 84 (2009), pp. 79–94.
Identification of a blind embossed print, presumably an impression of a metal stamp for embossing a leather book cover. Photo by Madeleine Viljoen, New York Public Library.
Identification of (grey-)brown printing ink in fifteenth-century blockbooks as discoloured iron gall ink. The iron gall writing ink was presumably made into a paste-like printing ink by adding extra gum Arabic. Technical analysis by Arie Wallert, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; find here a permalink to the analysed blockbook page: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.468205.
Lit.: Ad Stijnman, ‘The Colours of Black: Printing Inks for Blockbooks’, in Blockbücher des 15. Jahrhunderts, eine Experimentierphase im frühen Buchdruck: Beiträge der Fachtagung in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek München am 16. und 17. Februar 2012, ed. Bettina Wagner, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013 (Bibliothek und Wissenschaft; 46), pp. 59–80.
Download the article here (PDF, 12.2 MB): https://hab.academia.edu/AdStijnman (scroll down to Articles & Book Chapters).
Identification of a print from a private collection as a presumably nineteenth-century lithographic reproduction of a sixteenth-century woodcut. Microphotographs by Art Analysis & Research, London.
Identification of an anonymous eighteenth-century colour mezzotint as produced by French engraver Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty (1716–1785) in the first half of the 1740s. Photo by Christopher Mendez, London.
Advice on the production processes used for an eighteenth-century Dutch copper plate from a private collection that was etched with nearly the same image on both sides of the plate. Photo by Marc Hameleers.
Explanation of how impressions were made by positioning several smaller copper plates onto one larger copper plate and printing the whole in one run through the press in eighteenth-century France. Photo by James Mosley.
Explanation of etching techniques used for the Death of Margaret of Austria by Nicolaus Hogenberg in Malines c.1530. Photo by the Groeningemuseum, Bruges.