19th century photo papers

I am looking for information on original papers that were used to produce 19th century photographs.Such as,company names that produced it,types of paper,weights of paper or any other information.Any source is ok such as the web,books or periodicals.any help would be greatly appreciated,as I am doing research on this subject
thanks zgan

Start with the article on Silverprint's website: http://www.silverprint.co.uk/info/yespap.html, it's one of the rare well-researched online pieces on it.

After that, I could only suggest you to look into libraries. Given that you're in Montreal, Concordia, McGill and UQAM would have pretty decent resources together to get you started. To make for an easier start, go to the Grande Bibliothèque and browse through the photography section (dewey numbers 700-ish). There are plenty of history books in it.

I know that McGill has an English edition of Gaston Tissandier's Handbook of Photography, which was written during the collodion era (1874), well before silver gelatin was even a reality! The translation is from 1876, and the neat thing about it is that it contains advertisings (yes, advertisement in books, who knew!) for photographic products. Get it from the Blackader-Lauterman lib, call number TR145 T61.

BTW, what school are you doing this research for? And welcome to APUG from a fellow Montréalais!

This text may be of some use:
http://www.sharlot.org/archives/photographs/19th/leyshon.pdf
It doesn't identify manufacturers, but it does discuss in great detail the sorts of papers available.

Lindsay recently reprinted some 19th century books that may be of interest.
http://lindsaybks.com/bks10/abney/index.html
http://lindsaybks.com/bks10/esta/index.html

James Reilly's albumen book has some info. Its available online.

http://albumen.stanford.edu/library/monographs/reilly/

zgan said:

I am looking for information on original papers that were used to produce 19th century photographs.Such as,company names that produced it,types of paper,weights of paper or any other information.Any source is ok such as the web,books or periodicals.any help would be greatly appreciated,as I am doing research on this subject
thanks zgan

Click to expand...

British Journal of Photography Almanacs.

Cheers,

R.

thanks everyone for the info
hello to fellow montrealer MHV,the research is not for school but a project I am working on
thanks again zgan

If you can find an old Ilford Manual of Photography, they have a complete price list and description of all their plates and papers they offered. They also have chemical formulae for all processes with instructions. I have copied one page from my Manual and show it on my web site.

http://www.joelipkaphoto.com/coating_paper.html