Help me ID this process (duotone?)

[Matthew Rusbarsky]

A friend showed me some BW prints of his, done in the mid to late 70s. They had a vaguely solarized look, and the image was laid down in very metallic shades of blue/red/brown. He remembers using plain old RC paper and thought the chemistry was marketed as "duotone" Googling for "duotone/chemistry/darkroom/BW", etc hardly narrows it down for me. I would scan an example, but this is not the sort of thing that would translate at all well on a computer screen. Anyone out there with a long memory that could steer me in the rite direction?

Regards,

Matthew

 

[Ian Grant]

May have been Colourvir, that was quite commonn 70's/80's.

Ian

 

[AgX]

Duotone to my understandind is a designation for continuous-tone autotype printing with two shades of ink instead of one kind of black in order to gain that degree of shades known from monochrome continuous-tone gravure printing.

 

[Matthew Rusbarsky]

Thanks Ian. Just checked out the flickr group, and that's not it. This process looked very slightly solarized in the highlights and the tones were very muted and of a limited palette, almost like old oxidized copper.

 

[Matthew Rusbarsky]

Duotone to my understandind is autotype printing with two shades of grey instead of one kind of black in order to gain that degree of shades known from monochrome gravure printing.

That's what I've been coming up with in my Google searches. My friend may have some old documentation laying around....

 

[Ian Grant]

Thanks Ian. Just checked out the flickr group, and that's not it. This process looked very slightly solarized in the highlights and the tones were very muted and of a limited palette, almost like old oxidized copper.

The range of Colourvir kits was once far larger and you could do what you seem to be describing with some of their chemistry.

Ian

 

[AgX]

There was/is something as Halochrome (not of Colorvir) producing a kind of metalized look. If you'd combine this with some chromogenic development you might get something of that kind you described.
Just a wild guess though...

 

[AgX]

Mathew,

the Colorvir programme is/was quite complex. There are "Toners", "Special Effects" (including colouring solarizers), "Dyes" and "Polychromes" (the difference between the latter is not clear to me...)

 

[AgCl4ever]

Spiratone used to sell "metallic" B&W paper in various colors sometime in the 60's or 70's. Does that sound like what you might have?