Imagine you are a photographer living in the 1940s. You have only a small business, but much of your income is due to the personal postcards you are able to create for your clients. Many of your clients enjoy having postcards of themselves, or indeed of their homes or shops, to send to friends or to keep in their collection. With the printing masks which are available you can not only create lovely keepsakes for these clients, but also make fun joke cards to meet the current trend.
When I showed the children these printing masks they had no idea what they could be. The delicate masks appeared, to the children, to be nothing more than oddly shaped and printed pieces of paper, and most of the children had no idea how they would have been used. In a time of digital cameras and home printing, the idea of developing photographs and using such masks to create a more interesting effect was, as one child put it, so ‘out of date’. The children did like the idea of using the masks to create their own funny pictures and postcards, so look out in the coming weeks, and Roy will show you how to use the masks yourself!
The items I showed the children, though sold as printing masks and vignettes, are today often described as photo masks. Masks are used, even today, in printing photos and postcards, though of course today much of the work is done using computers. In traditional photography, where the photo is developed by a chemical process from a negative, masks like the ones I showed the children can still be used, and indeed often are. In fact, printing a photo without any mask at all can result in a photo which is not as clear or crisp. Many masks work with various contrasts in photos, highlighting shadows or making the edges of shapes in the image sharper. Some masks though hide certain areas of the image, or add a new layer of image entirely – like the ones in the photos.
The masks I showed the children are from the 1930s or 1940s and were used specifically for printing postcards. Although these masks would have been commonly used in the early to mid 1900s, there is very little information about them, or how they work, so if you know more, please leave a comment! From what we can find, a photo would be taken and then the negative of that photo would be masked before printing, to produce the desired result (often a border, but sometimes a comic image). The mask would be placed directly onto the original negative, aligning the two images (one from the photo, and one from the mask) very carefully to create a single, cohesive picture. Often, especially if more than one copy of the resulting picture was to be printed, the mask would actually be attached to the negative to prevent the images becoming misaligned. The masked negative would then be printed with the mask sandwiched between the light source and the developing paper. The mask worked by blocking the light to certain areas of the negative, preventing those areas from printing. Other areas were printed as patterns or lines, as they had a certain amount of transparency, but not enough to allow the negative hidden behind the mask to print. This is how ornate borders or funny figures were created.