Notes from the plate archive

The archive at Foundry Row holds a little over fifteen hundred plates. The oldest are from the 1870s and a surprising number are unattributed: the job books for two decades were lost, and what survives is a steel plate with a beautiful engraved figure and no indication of whose it was.

An unattributed plate is a peculiar object. It cannot be reused, because we do not know who owns the device on it. It cannot be destroyed, because it may be the only record of a document some institution still issues. So it is catalogued, wrapped and left alone.

What the plates teach

They are also the best teaching collection we have. A cabinet of plates spanning a hundred and fifty years shows an apprentice, faster than any explanation, how the depth of a cut relates to the weight of a line, and how the engravers of the 1890s solved problems that we solve differently and not always better.

Twice a year we pull a plate, print a short edition from it, and put the impressions in the archive alongside the steel. It is the only way to know whether a plate still prints.