Prints
"A South East View of the Great Town of Boston in New England in America," 1764. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Before camera phones and social media, how could a one-of-a-kind painting be seen by thousands of people spread across continents? Prior to the invention of the printing press, sharing art widely was virtually impossible. But just as the printing press allowed for the written word to be shared more easily, the technology of printmaking, developed in around 1400, transformed the accessibility of visual art.
George Beacher Trade Card, ca. 1740. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Print-making is a process for mass producing art and images. Most prints in Colonial Williamsburg’s collection were created with a technique called intaglio printing (Italian for engraving). This involved engraving an image onto a metal plate using a sharp tool, filling the engraved lines with ink, placing the plate and paper on a rolling press, and applying pressure. This transferred the ink to the paper, capturing the intended design. Color printing was not widely available until the second half of the 19th century. Most prints in the collection were hand colored with watercolor by professional colorists before they were sold to consumers.
Engraved images enabled rapid reproduction, allowing a single image to be mass-produced and widely shared. For example, a print based on a painting of a famous person could be shared and seen across an empire. Prints also served as a crucial source of knowledge for information-hungry British subjects. They used prints to associate faces with names, decorate homes and businesses, entertain through satirical imagery, advertise products, share knowledge about the natural world, visualize faraway places, or spread political ideas.
Highlights from the Collection
Prints depicted a variety of subjects, including natural history, politics, portraits, history, current events, places, satire, and more.
Portraits
Sa Ga Yeath Qua Pieth Tow
This print depicts one of four Haudenousaunee men who visited England in 1710. Prints made sharing images of other people around the world possible.
Natural History
The Natural History of Carolina
Europeans used prints to share scientific knowledge about the natural world, like plants and animals.
Satire
Feather’d Fair in a Fright
Much like today, prints used satire to poke fun at society and politics. This print mocks the craze for ostrich feathers in women’s fashion.
Historical Events
The Bloody Massacre
Prints often shaped how people understood current events. This popular depiction of the Boston Massacre showed sympathy for American colonists.
Places
Wimple in the County of Cambridge
Views of faraway places, such as this print of an English estate, might have provided information, inspiration, or simply decoration.
What do prints tell us about the past?
Today, historians and curators learn a great deal about the past through prints. Prints provide details about everyday life that weren’t always mentioned in writing. For example, they show how people used certain objects or wore certain clothes, or how furniture might have been arranged in a room. How people interacted with each other and social expectations can also be studied through prints.
Scholars use prints like this to glean details about daily life, including decorations and clothing. “CHARLES concluding a Treaty of Marriage, with the Daughter of the Nobleman,” 1787. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
However, the study of prints is not without its challenges. One such challenge is that many prints, even those depicting American scenes, were produced in London by artists who had never visited America. Some details in these prints are more fictional than factual, resembling scenes that could be from fantasy novel rather than an accurate American landscape. This discrepancy reminds us that while prints are informative, they also have their limitations.
Printmakers capitalized on current events, at times depicting scenes with only scarce details. This French print of the 1781 surrender at Yorktown shows the event in an imagined Europeanized setting. For example, the city in the background resembles a fortified European city more than the actual city of Yorktown. “The Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown,” ca. 1781. Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Prints at Colonial Williamsburg
At Colonial Williamsburg, prints are vital educational and research resources. We create, collect, research, conserve, and exhibit historic prints for us to learn from today and in the future.
Collect
The print collection at Colonial Williamsburg provides a window into the eighteenth-century world. Initially, the print collection was acquired to decorate the historic area. Today it serves as a resource for understanding eighteenth-century life.
Research
By researching historical records like estate inventories or this order for goods from Britain, we glean insights into what prints people ordered and where they hung them. Estate inventories reveal that prints were often located where luxury goods were on display, like parlors, dining rooms, halls, and stairwells.
Conserve
The Paper Conservation Laboratory uses specialized equipment to treat works on paper in Colonial Williamsburg’s collections, including prints, maps, wallpaper, watercolor paintings, drawings, manuscripts, and architectural drawings and models.
Exhibit
Selected prints from the collection are on view at the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg. Reproductions copied from originals in the collection decorate the walls of many of the buildings in the historic area as they would have in the eighteenth century. This protects the original prints from environmental damage.
Create
While Williamsburg did not have a local print engraver in the eighteenth century due to the availability of imported prints from England, today our engraver shop sustains this historic trade.
Explore Prints
Visscher’s Print of America
Furber's Flowers
Call it Macaroni
Achieving Fame
Additional Resources
Celebrity in Print
This exhibition features prints of notable figures, whose fame and celebrity rose as news and portraits of them spread around the globe through print.
