The Manufacture and Use of Albumen Paper

Paper presented at a Symposium on “Preservation and Restoration of Photographic Images” held at Rochester Institute of Technology, September 1977.

Abstract

Albumen paper was the most widely used photographic printing material in the nineteenth century. It was a pure silver chloride printing-out paper, manually coated sheet by sheet in factories and usually sensitized by the user at the time of use by floating on a silver nitrate solution. Processing involved gold toning and fixing with sodium thiosulphate.

The centre of world manufacture was in Dresden, Germany, where two large companies dominated the industry. Raw stock was supplied from only two paper mills which held a virtual world monopoly. Presensitized and roll-coated gelatin and collodion printing-out papers finally captured the market from albumen paper in the early 1890’s. Albumen paper enjoyed a revival around World War I when “matte-albumen” papers, made with a mixture of starch and albumen, were briefly popular. The last commercial production of albumen paper is believed to have been in 1929.

Notes

Paper presented at a Symposium on “Preservation and Restoration of Photographic Images” held at Rochester Institute of Technology, September 1977.