Argyrotype is an
iron-based silver printing process that produces brown images on plain paper. It is an
alternative process
{{unsourced, date= March 2021
The term alternative process refers to any non-traditional or non-commercial photographic printing process. Currently the standard analog photographic printing process is the gelatin silver process, and standard digi ...
derived from the
argentotype,
kallitype Kallitype is a process for making photographic prints.
Patented in 1889 by W. W. J. Nicol (1855-1929), the Kallitype print is an iron-silver process. A chemical process similar to the Van Dyke brown based on the use of a combination of ferric and ...
, and
Van Dyke processes of the 19th century, but has greater simplicity, improved image stability, and longer sensitizer shelf-life.
[Mike Ware] It was developed by
Mike Ware.
While this process may not have the permanence of other processes such as
platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver".
Platinu ...
or
palladium printing
Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself nam ...
, it is much less expensive and more user friendly. The core resource used is
silver sulphamate (NH
2SO
3Ag) which can be prepared on site from
sulphamic acid.
The sensitizer used is very slow, so printing must be by contact with a
large format
Large format refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120- and 220-roll film), and much larger than the frame o ...
negative, using an
ultraviolet
Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nanometer, nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 Hertz, PHz) to 400 nm (750 Hertz, THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than ...
lamp or sunlight.
As with most alternative processes there is room for manipulating the process to achieve different effects, and since the image is produced on plain paper many drawing or print making processes can be combined with the original image.
References
{{Reflist
External links
The Argyrotype Process by Mike WareFormula overview for Vandyke, Kallitype and Argyrotype by Wynn White
Printmaking