An original, interactive and instructive encounter with their collection of advertising woodblocks and posters
Ever wondered, or wanted to explain, how colour images are printed? Well you now have a handy online tool which shows how coloured advertising posters were once printed from woodblocks. The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin has just put online a new interactive gallery showing a selection from their fabulous collection of posters along with their corresponding woodblocks. By clicking on a poster and then scrolling down from the complete printed version you can examine the wood blocks that were used and ‘print’ them in whatever order you fancy. In most of the posters the colours are printed side by side, but among those that are currently online one has been (discretely) rainbow-printed and another uses overprinted colours to enlarge the palette.
Some of the posters are available for sale in the Museum’s online store. When the ‘buy’ button is visible, it will take you to that poster in the store.
If you enjoy seeing Hamilton artifacts you can also check out more posters as part of the Museum’s Recollection Wisconsin archive.