CLICHÉ VERRE

WHAT IS A CLICHÉ VERRE?

Cliche-verre means literally 'glass picture'. It is also known as glass etching or hyalography (back to the old business of dredging the Greek and Latin dictionaries for fancy names - in this case the Greek word for glass). The method was used regularly to good effect by the French painters Corot and Millet. It is essentially a hand drawn negative and as such is difficult for historians and students of old processes to categorise. Perhaps it illustrates the currently held view that the artist's ideas are more important than the medium through which they are expressed. Corot and his contemporaries (from the Barbizon School of painting) took a piece of flat glass, smoked it over a tallow candle, and then scratched an image in the soot covered surface with a sharp pointed instrument. This was placed onto a sheet of photosensitive paper and exposed in the sun. When the light passed through the clear parts of the glass where it had been scratched, it produced a line drawing in black on a white background. This could be reproduced ad infinitum without resorting to the making of an etching plate and the use of a heavy and bulky printing press, or even more important, without having to pay for the services of a printing studio. If you insist on being completely historically correct you can use the smoked or varnished glass method, but there is a much more flexible improved way of working which give opportunities for many more variations of effects. This involves the use of a sheet of fogged lith film. It may not be quite so authentic but it is close to the spirit of the thing without having to 'invent' a new old process.

SOURCE:  http://www.silverprint.co.uk/sos27.html

WHAT DO CLICHÉ VERRES  LOOK LIKE?

This cliché verre is by Corot and found at the Kuntsmuseum, Bern, Switzerland

IMAGE SOURCE:  http://www.groensteen.net/clicheverre.php

MORE EXAMPLES OF COROT'S CLICHÉ VERRE ART, "THE LITTLE SISTER" AND "THE DREAMER".  CLICK ON FOR MORE AT THE SOURCE:  http://appletonmuseum.org/exhibitions/barbizon/9701photoalbum.cfm

Click onto this extensive link with more examples:  http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/numbers/ClicheVerres/cvcont.html

WHAT ARE OTHER WAYS OF MAKING CLICHÉ  VERRES MORE SAFELY THAN WITH GLASS? 

Clear acetate can be a useful replacement for glass if fire is not used.  Thicknesses .003 and .005 work well enough.  If the edges curl up, cut the image slightly larger than desired and create a frame using a few layers of masking tape on the front and back.  Plexiglass can also be used.

One can etch through a coat of acrylic paint to print black lines on photo paper.  A drawing on clear acetate or plexiglass can be etched and black or another color acrylic can be wiped over it and removed from the top surface leaving the paint in the etched marks.  That will produce white lines.  Sandpaper can be used for larger areas or even grinding with a Dremel Tool or an electric vibration tool that etches names into plastic.

Plastic wrap whose edges are ultimately sealed like a bag can hold washes of India Ink and by leaving little air, it can be pushed and prodded gently to get unique amorphic shapes, bubbles, etc.

As for a normal enlargement from a negative, test strips for time or f-stop can be used to achieve a variety of densities.  Moving the cliché verre plate during exposure can produce interesting variations.

DOES DIGITAL CLICHÉ VERRE EXIST? 

Instead of using photographic paper and a dark room, the scanner can be used to create cliché verre prints.

For a sequential look at digital cliché verre prints, click onto: http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/numbers/DigitalClicheVerres/DigitalCVContents.html

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