A NEW INVENTION IN PRINTING (1940)

DOX THRASH & HIS CARBORGRAPH PRINT INVENTION

Carborgraph's European Origins: "A Short History"

Carborgraph printing Process was invented by Dox Thrash in 1938, at the Pennsylvania WPA Art Project, 510 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Michael Gallagher and Hubert Mesibov, two Europeans, (shown from left to right in a photograph print above, on your right) shared their contributions in this invention that same year. Dox Thrash and Claude Clark appear in the photograph on the left.

An article titled: "A New Printing Process" was printed in the Crisis magazine December 1940. The article pointed out (incorrectly) that the last fine arts printing process invention was the lithograph (a planographic printing process), invented by Alois Senefelder of Bavaria, in 1796. Thomas Bewick invented wood engraving during the 1800s. I might also add that Alois Senefelder, Thomas Bewick, and Dox Thrash are the only three names of inventors accurately identified with inventing fine art printing products. Alois Senefelder published a book on his invention, in 1819. Bewick and Thrash had articles written about them.

People mistakenly place Johann Gutenberg among the list of fine art print inventors, but Gutenberg invented moveable type printing, not woodcuts.

Actually the last recorded art printing process was silkscreen printing (a type of stencil printing invented in the United States during the 1920's). This process was inspired by Japanese stencil printing. No one knows who the inventor or inventors were, or the exact date silkscreen was invented, furthermore silkscreen printing was first a commercial and not a fine arts medium until after 1938, when another term "serigraph" was attached to the medium for the benefit of critics who used the term to distinguish fine art silkscreen prints from commercial silkscreen prints.

Carborgraphs closes cousin is a mezzotint. Both are intaglio printing processes.

The Process Of Producing A Carborgraph Print

Article Still Under Constuction

article written -  by Claude Lockhart Clark

Revised: August 03, 2000.
Copyright © 1996 by Visual Arts Illustrated.
All trademarks or product names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.