ca.1895 French photochrom CANAL IN BRUGES BRUGGE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM, #163

Description: Boulanger_163 ca.1895 French photochrom CANAL IN BRUGES BRUGGE, FLANDERS, BELGIUM, #163 Photochrom titled Bruges. Le Canal, page size 32 x 24 cm, image size 21 x 14.5 cm. From: Autour du Monde - Aquarelles - Souvenirs de Voyages, Paris, L. Boulanger, editeur. Brugge French Bruges city, Flanders Region, northwestern Belgium, about 10 miles (16 km) south of Zeebrugge, its port on the North Sea. Originally a landing place on the Zwijn estuary, into which the Reie River flowed, it was mentioned in the 7th century as the Municipium Brugense (a name derived from a Roman bridge over the Reie). Brugge's intricate network of canals has led many to describe the city as the Venice of the North. After it was evangelized by St. Eloi, bishop of Noyon-Tournai, the first counts of Flanders built their castle there (9th century) against Norman invaders. By the 13th century the town held a monopoly on English wool, was a leading emporium for the Hanseatic League, and, with the other “members from Flanders” (Ghent and Ypres), virtually governed the entire province. After maintaining its independence despite an attack by France in 1302, it reached its commercial zenith in the 14th century. At that time it was one of the largest and most important cities in northern Europe. As the Zwijn estuary silted up in the 15th century, the city began to decline as a trade centre but remained brilliant and powerful as the court of the dukes of Burgundy (counts of Flanders from 1384) and as the artistic centre of the Flemish school of painting, until the religious and political struggles of the 16th century completed its eclipse. It remained a sleepy medieval town until the construction of the port of Zeebrugge and the cutting of a connecting canal (opened 1907) revived trade and stimulated industry and tourism. It was occupied by the Germans in World Wars I and II; the harbour of Zeebrugge was raided by the British in 1918, and blockships were sunk in the canal to deny the use of the port to German submarines. As a rail and canal junction, Brugge depends largely on tourism, but a relatively new industrial area in the north produces ships, electronic equipment, dies, yeast, and industrial glass. Spinning, weaving, and lace making are traditional. Medieval remains in the city include the old Market Hall (13th–15th century), with a famous 47-bell carillon in the belfry, and the Town Hall (1376–1420). The Chapel of the Holy Blood (14th–16th century) contains the Chapel of St. Basil (1150) and a gold casket that is reputed to hold a few drops of Christ's blood brought from the Holy Land in 1150. Other notable churches include the Cathedral of St. Salvator (12th–16th century); the Church of Notre Dame, containing the tombs of Mary of Burgundy and her father, Charles the Bold; and the Church of Jerusalem (1428), a replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Notable among numerous museums with collections of Flemish art and history are the Memling Museum in the 12th-century Hospital of St. John, the Groeninge Museum, and the 15th-century Gruuthuse mansion. The béguinage (a retreat for secular nuns; 1245) is one of the finest in Belgium. The medieval atmosphere of Brugge lends itself to pageantry, a notable example of which is the Procession of Holy Blood (on Ascension Day). Pop. (2007 est.) mun., 116,982. Photochrom Photochrom (also called the Aäc process) prints are colorized images produced from black-and-white photographic negatives via the direct photographic transfer of a negative onto lithographic printing plates. The process is properly considered a photographic variant of chromolithography, a broader term referring to color lithography in general. History The process was invented in the 1880s by Hans Jakob Schmid (1856–1924), an employee of the Swiss company Orell Gessner Füssli, a printing firm with a history extending back into the 16th century. Füssli founded the stock company Photochrom Zürich (later Photoglob Zürich AG) as the business vehicle for the commercial exploitation of the process and both Füssli and Photoglob continue to exist today. From the mid 1890s on the process was licensed by other companies including the Detroit Photographic Company in the US and the Photochrom Company of London. The photochrom process was most popular in the 1890s, when true color photography was first being developed but was still commercially impractical. In 1898 the US Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act which allowed private publishers to produce postcards. These could be mailed for one cent each — the letter rate at the time was two cents. Thousands of photochrom prints, usually of cities or landscapes, were created and sold as postcards and it is in this format that photochrom reproductions became most popular. The Detroit Photographic Company reportedly produced as many as seven million photochrom prints in some years, and ten to thirty thousand different views were offered. After World War One, which brought an end to the craze for collecting Photochrom postcards, the chief use of the process was printing posters and art reproductions, and the last Photochrom printer operated up to 1970. Process A tablet of lithographic limestone, known as a "litho stone," is coated with a light-sensitive coating, comprising a thin layer of purified bitumen dissolved in benzene. A reversed half-tone negative is then pressed against the coating and exposed to daylight for a period of 10 to 30 minutes in summer, up to several hours in winter. The image on the negative allows varying amounts of light to fall on different areas of the coating, causing the bitumen to harden and become resistant to normal solvents in proportion to the amount of light that falls on it. The coating is then washed in turpentine solutions to remove the unhardened bitumen and retouched in the tonal scale of the chosen color to strengthen or soften the tones as required. Each tint is applied using a separate stone bearing the appropriate retouched image. The finished print is produced using at least six, but more commonly from 10 to 15, tint stones.

Price: 24.99 USD

Location: Zagreb, HR

End Time: 2025-01-10T06:29:30.000Z

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