Invented from CopiesInvented from Copies

Curator Hetty Berens explores Het Nieuwe Instituut's collection for evidence of the blueprint's invention and adoption by Dutch architects and engineers between 1870 and 1920. She charts the progress from early failures to a professional process that led to the familiar dark-blue blueprint.

Prussian Blue! Today, the blueprint is ubiquitous in visual culture and artistic design practice. For example, artists investigate how the blueprinting process can depict the invisible qualities of architectural space, and designers use its white-on-a-blue-background to visualise both the past and future. Further afield, in the tradition of botanist and photographer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), blueprinting has been used to investigate imperceptible processes in nature. And although architects nowadays make digital copies, the 'blueprint' is one of the digital design tools at their disposal, along with blueprint sketchbooks.

Not so long ago, however, the blueprint had a pivotal role in architectural design. Those who delve into Het Nieuwe Instituut's archives regularly encounter the blueprint's striking and appealing colour among the many tracings and photoreproductive prints In this essay, I investigate the blueprint's introduction into architectural practice. How did architects first learn that they could reproduce their drawings using blueprints, instead of copying them by hand? Which architects used blueprinting for the first time, and on what projects? What does the growing use of blueprints tell us about the architectural practice of the time? By drawing on sources and research in late 19th- and early 20th-century archives, a fascinating reconstruction emerges of the blueprint's introduction into architectural design practice.

The oldest blueprints in Het Nieuwe Instituut's collection date from 1891 to 1893 and are in the archives of three major architectural firms: P.J.H. Cuypers, the Van Gendt brothers, and H.P. Berlage. They are drawings of Kasteel de Haar in Utrecht, Villa Rozenhof in Dordrecht and an office building at Damrak 74-76 in Amsterdam. All three projects point to the increasingly complex building practices of the late 19th century. More actors were becoming involved in design and its implementation. As such, good duplicates were imperative for effective communication between manufacturers, suppliers, material producers, constructors and so on.

One of the collection's oldest blueprints is from September 1891 and features a design for Villa Rozenhof in Dordrecht by Amsterdam-based architect A.L. van Gendt. He outsourced the execution of the villa's iron conservatory to a metal contractor. Van Gendt probably made the blueprint for this metal contractor - an accurate copy of the final design would have been indispensable to them. Van Gendt likely bought the prepared paper for this blueprint from the Ahrend company in Amsterdam. However, it is not known whether Van Gendt had the blueprint produced at his architectural office by one of his employees or at Ahrend , a company for photoreproductive prints With its uniform dark blue colour and straight cut, this blueprint's good quality indicates that professional reprographers produced it. This blueprint is one of tens of thousands in Het Nieuwe Instituut's collection. Though these blueprints remain uncounted, their number must be considerable because, from the last quarter of the 19th century until the 1940s, the production of blueprints was inextricably linked to architectural design.

Blueprints from 1890 to 1920 demonstrate that this was a period of experiment; they have a considerable variation in colour intensity and reveal numerous 'beginner's mistakes'. Sometimes, the blueprint's quality is so bad that the copy is or became unreadable, losing its purpose as an information source.

These experiments add to the blueprint's cultural significance in this early phase before standardisation and mechanisation took hold. Architects experimented with chemicals and papers and made their own exposure frames. Perhaps this is why relatively many beginner's mistakes on blueprints from this period made it into the archive. Compared to professionally printed blueprints, in-house attempts are poorly cut and have more colour irregularities, sometimes with dark bands along the edges or white blotches and lines.

In addition, blueprints from 1890 to 1920 are distinguishable according to the drawing's role in the design process. Broadly speaking, there are three categories:

• Blueprints supplied to architects by third parties working as a consultant or designer of an existing building;
• Blueprints architects supplied to third parties, particularly building dossiers for extensive construction projects, such as Kasteel de Haar that involved several parties. Numerous blueprints of this building have been preserved, from the layout to the garden, old ruins and ornaments;
• Blueprints of designs for specific building components, such as iron gazebos, fencing and stairs made by a metal contractor, such as for Villa Rozenhof in Dordrecht and Berlage's office building at Damrak 74-76.

In this early period, blueprints were often copies of drawings of existing designs and provided information for restoration and renovation. Or they were reproductions of specifications and working drawings that had to be carried out by third parties, or reproductions of preliminary and final designs to which several designers contributed. In some cases, they were blueprints of written specifications. From the early 19th century, many fields experimented with different photoreproductive printing techniques for reproducing images and texts. Important examples are photography, printing, and other industries such as porcelain manufacturing, where precise copies were indispensable due to ever-increasing mechanisation. The experiments differed significantly from the established artisanal methods for woodcuts, letterpress printing and copper engraving and were not affiliated with the traditional printers but were done by a diverse group of amateurs, scientists and entrepreneurs. The invention of the blueprint fits within this context of innovation.

The blueprint had been invented in 1842 by the Englishman John Herschel. He was an expert in astronomy, chemistry, mathematics and photography. Herschel's development of the blueprint was a step in a whole series of experiments over 40 years. Herschel was probably looking for a way of copying his scientific notes. However, it has also been suggested that he was searching for a positive colour photographic process, and the negative blueprint might initially have been considered a failed experiment.

The first blueprinting experiments were not without challenges. The blueprints had to be kept in the dark and could only be viewed under artificial light because natural light would make the image disappear. The first hurdle to overcome was preserving the prepared paper and preparation liquid, both of which previously became quickly unusable. Herschel's new methods for making photosensitive paper were an important breakthrough. In 1842 he was the first to apply the action of sunlight on iron compounds dissolved in water by soaking paper in an ammonium ferric citrate solution. This process used two chemicals: ammonium ferric citrate and potassium ferricyanide. Exposing these substances to light turns the paper Prussian blue. When the chemicals are washed away with water, a stable and distinctive blue colour remains on which the image is shown in white lines.

The blueprint technique is based on a simple photographic process that merely requires two chemicals, water and daylight. From 1842 onward, this process made enormous advances internationally, especially for photographers. It had many advantages over other complex and time-consuming photographic methods. Compared to the then-common practice of manual tracing, perhaps blueprinting's speed and cost savings made it a successful copying technique in the design world.

Some of the advantages mentioned above unintentionally stalled photography's breakthrough. In the first 50 years of blueprint photography, it was mainly used by amateur photographers rather than for copying designs, texts or images in books and magazines. During this period, the latter were still made by hand, usually by a lithographer. The blueprint also had to compete with black-and-white images because readers were familiar with black-and-white and sepia prints.

However, several external causes meant the blueprint soon established itself as a reproduction technique in architecture and engineering. Office technology was undergoing considerable modernisation. Legislation and regulations now demanded permit applications had precise copies. Furthermore, increasingly complex design assignments required more cooperating parties

"When making a limited number of copies of existing drawings, the originals are usually traced onto tracing linen or paper. Those who personally had to produce such tracings or have them produced will certainly have asked themselves whether this mechanical and time-consuming work could be executed more simply, quickly and cheaply? Could one, like a photographer using a photochemical process, make many positive copies from one negative, make many tracings from one original, without having to call in the help of a draftsman, who has to draw line by line and also check line by line?" P. Huffnagel, Het vervaardigen van lichtdrukken [The production of photoprints], De Militaire Spectator [The Military Spectator], 1887, vol. 55, 734-754.

The above quote comes from engineer P. Huffnagel's publication The Production of Photoreproductive prints (Het vervaardigen van lichtdrukken). It appeared in 1887 in the magazine The Military Spectator (de Militaire Spectator) and was the first comprehensive article in the Netherlands on the reproduction of drawings. Huffnagel graduated from the Royal Military Academy (Koninklijke Militaire Akademie) in 1879 and taught there from 1884 to 1893 when it was a knowledge centre that closely monitored new technical developments. It was logical that a military magazine published an article about the blueprint because military education in the 19th century was the source of knowledge and innovation in architecture.

Huffnagel distinguished no fewer than 11 types of reproduction; seven with a positive image and four with a negative image. One of the latter was the blueprint, or the negative cyanotype, a white drawing on a blue background. Its durability made it the preferred choice. The prepared paper kept well for several months, and the processing was straightforward because once exposed to light, the paper only had to be washed and dried.

Huffnagel also described how complicated it was to make the blueprint a commercial success in the early stages due to the difficulties in developing a genuinely durable light-sensitive paper. Once this was achieved around 1860, the findings were exhibited in Paris at the 1867 International Exposition. Here, a supplier showed the blueprint under the French name cyanotype. From 1870, German, Austrian and French manufacturers succeeded in prolonging blueprint paper's longevity. Schleicher und Schüll in Düren and Marion Fils in Paris supplied paper (75 x 100 cm ) and preparation liquid. The innovations for exposure frames did not lag behind either, with lighter and portable frames coming onto the market.

Huffnagel also informed his readers about the possibilities for making changes to blueprints with suitable opaque white paint or by using gum water dissolved in potassium or sodium hydroxide to remove the blue dye. To remove an existing line, a light-sensitive liquid is applied to the line to be covered, after which the drawing is exposed to light and washed. For Huffnagel, however, the blueprint's simple processing made it exceptional. An advertisement in De Architect magazine from 1901 illustrates the production of blueprint paper in the Netherlands and the use of photoreproductive print in military and civilian design. The Electrical Factory of Photographic Reproduction and Tracing Papers of Cornelius Immig & Son (Corns. Immig & Zoon) in Rotterdam advertised as follows: "Various water management departments, military engineers, railways, shipyards, civil engineers and architects use our papers, which surpass foreign products." De Architect [The Architect], 1901, vol. 12, issue III, 1.

It is no coincidence that IMMIG mentions engineers and architects last. Its primary and largest buyers of blueprint paper were the military engineers and readers of De Militaire Spectator (The Military Spectator). They were employed by national water management, the engineering corps, the railways and naval shipyards. The military, civil engineers and architects did not work in separate sectors, and the transfer of knowledge concerning making copies and blueprints occurred here.

Three years after Huffnagel's article was published, P.A. Frijlink published the second overview article on photographic reproduction in Bouwkundig Weekblad. It was the first article specifically aimed at the architectural community. The author was a Utrecht-based architect who, from 1883, produced the first blueprint labels for pharmacists and advertised them in the Pharmaceutisch Weekblad. (Pharmaceutical Weekly).

Frijlink used his practical experience to guide the reader through the blueprinting process, which, according to him, required some chemistry knowledge to develop the liquids and for the types of paper used. He mainly discussed practical matters, such as achieving the right shade of blue by using the right amount of iron in the formula. He described how the white paper had to be stretched on a copying frame, and then the liquid was applied with a sponge or broad, soft brush. The treated paper could be procured in two ways: making it yourself or purchasing prepared paper. (He also provided recommendations for commercially available prepared paper and gave its nomenclature in German, Blausaures-eisen-papier, and French, papier au ferro prussiate.) The colour varied from green-yellow to blue, grey and lead-coloured grey. The paper was then removed from the copying frame, washed in sinks and draped over a round paper-covered rod to dry.

Frijlink emphasised that the formula, paper, weather, light, temperature, and design on the tracing paper determined the blueprint's quality. He pointed out the complications that could arise while making blueprints, such as a short exposure of the drawing, resulting in pale blue and ill-defined lines. If the drawing were exposed to light for too long, the thinner lines would contain more and the thicker lines less blue, making them both less visible. The best results were achieved when the original drawing was made with Indian ink lines, without additional colouring. According to Frijlink, it was possible to colour blueprints with, for example, yellow once they had been developed. P.A. Frijlink, Een en ander over lichtdrukken [On the subject of photographic printing], Bouwkundig Weekblad, 1890, No. X, 2-5.

In the last quarter of the 19th century, water management engineers, military engineers, architects and carpenters used blueprinting to make copies of construction or engineering drawings faster and easier than before. In its 1923 jubilee book, IMMIG printing company mentioned that copying "construction drawings of engineers, architects, carpenters and others construction and architectural professions is a growth market. Every well-known architectural firm produces such photographic reproductions for its own needs and under its own administering." Het Grafisch Grootbedrijf der Naamlooze Vennootschappen Koninklijke Boek- en Lichtdrukkerij Koninklijke Steendrukkerij voorheen CORNS. IMMIG & ZOON 1873-1923 [The Graphical Company of Public Limited Companies, Royal Book and Photographic Printing Company, and Royal Lithographers, formerly CORNELIUS IMMIG & SON 1873-1923], Rotterdam, 1 September 1923, 4.

The blueprint was introduced at a time when exact copies of technical drawings became indispensable for architectural design and office practices that were becoming increasingly complex. The design process involved more parties, such as steel manufacturers, suppliers of wooden door and window frames and other wooden components, installers of heating, electricity and sewer systems and so on. The blueprint was used specifically for the reproduction of written specifications, tender drawings and working drawings. These were made to be copied quickly and accurately and then passed on to other parties in the design and execution process.

Before 1880, hardly any design drawings were reproduced because the construction site workers were given verbal instructions. Blueprints were initially the domain of the minority in higher company positions: a controlling party such as a municipality and external contractors such as metal companies. Therefore, blueprints in this initial phase were mainly copies of technical drawings of products made in factories.

The construction industry also increasingly had to deal with stricter control by municipal authorities and was another incentive for making good copies of construction drawings. Archiving drawings and texts for later use became more common and served a practical and legal purpose. From 1872, building plans had to be approved by the municipality.

The fundamentals of the introduction of modern copying techniques were concurrent with 19th-century industrialisation and mechanisation, where continually making exact reproductions was imperative. The blueprint drawing must be placed in this context of industrialisation, such as the increasing scale of architectural office development, the introduction of technology to the office and increasing control over the design and implementation process. .

Between 1890 and 1910, blueprinting increased significantly, resulting in lower costs. Making blueprints consisted of two steps: impregnating the paper and then copying the drawn design onto tracing paper. The paper was initially coated manually and then dried. The blueprints were made using portable wooden exposure frames clamped to glass plates; this was usually done on the roof of a building or in windows on specially constructed rails. The drawing to be transferred, commonly referred to as the reproducible, was placed directly against the glass with the photosensitive paper directly behind it. A felt blanket or rubber sheet was placed behind the paper. The back of the frame was securely fastened using one of several mechanisms to ensure good contact between the reproducible and the photosensitive paper. Poor contact resulted in a blurry print. The frame could be opened temporarily to remove test strips of light-sensitive paper, thus checking the progress of daylight exposure. Extensive designs on very large formats were copied by placing the reproducible and the photosensitive paper around a large cylinder on a cradle and spinning them in sunlight. Both processes required a lot of space and time. In the early days, this process was done in-house.

C.B. Epker, an engineer from Kralingen, Rotterdam, and a teacher at the civic evening school, was the first in the Netherlands to manufacture a machine for preparing blueprint paper. In 1897 he even set up a small factory in Rotterdam, the first of its kind in the Netherlands. In addition to prepared paper, he also marketed exposure devices consisting of wooden frames. These innovations meant architects no longer had to make exposure frames but could purchase them from, for example, the Stemler bookshop in Amsterdam. While some architects made their own reproductions, others increasingly had their blueprints made at bookshops and printers. Early examples of these companies are Ahrend in Amsterdam, Cornelis Immig & Son in Rotterdam, Van der Linden in Leiden and Van der Grinten in Venlo. Ahrend in Amsterdam initially made the copies in the attic of its business premises at the Mercurius building, Amsterdam. The employees would roll out the pneumatic reprographic apparatuses to make use of the sunlight. This could mean that 15 minutes was sufficient exposure time in the summer, but several hours were needed in the winter. The company displayed its range of photographic copying devices at the 1883 national trade fair in Amsterdam.

The next major leap in the development of the blueprint was the introduction of an electric printer in 1903. From now on, a blueprint took only 10 minutes. "Ahrend prided themselves on being able to make a 5m2 print on the largest machine in the country with this device." Dirk de Wit, 60+40 is waarschijnlijk honderd [60+40 is probably one hundred]. Ahrend Passers, pennen, potloden en projecten [Ahrend compasses, pens, pencils and projects], Zwolle 1996, 48 In 1907 a blueprinting machine with continuous paper feed driven by an electric motor was introduced in Germany. Several arc lamps hung side by side provided a light source. One could connect an additional device to this machine, which washed and dried the blueprints. The blueprint machine was mentioned in De Ingenieur (The Engineer) magazine in 1907 after being reported in the German Electrotechnical Zeitschrift ( Electrotechnical Journal).

Though the previously mentioned printer Cornelis Immig (1867-1924) was a major player, he quickly recognised his lack of chemistry knowledge. Therefore, he sought advice from chemists and pharmacists who had more understanding of the photoreproductive printing process. From 1896 onwards, with the help of this knowledge, Immig focused increasingly on innovative photomechanical copying processes in specially equipped photoreproductive printing rooms and preparation areas. Printing houses such as IMMIG procured exposure frames, sinks, prepared paper and liquids to produce blueprints. His copying business went so well that in 1905 he opened a new building for the photoreproductive printing department on Gedempte Slaak in Rotterdam. In its 1923 commemorative anniversary publication, the company proudly inventories the blueprinting department's equipment: "Several large 140 x 240 cm exposure frames and smaller 100 x 200 cm ones, which can be rolled out on the open roof in favourable weather, four electric rotary photoreproductive printing devices (manufactured inhouse) and a device for flat lighting. [&] Equipment for the manufacture of technical papers, four paper-preparing machines for photoreproductiveprinting paper, one for tracing paper, machine counting device for unrolling paper and rolling a prescribed number of metres and a similar apparatus for American sizes." Het Grafisch Grootbedrijf der Naamlooze Vennootschappen Koninklijke Boek- en Lichtdrukkerij Koninklijke Steendrukkerij voorheen CORNS. IMMIG & ZOON 1873-1923 [The Graphical Company of Public Limited Companies, Royal Book and Photographic Printing Company, and Royal Lithographers, formerly CORNELIUS IMMIG & SON 1873-1923], Rotterdam, 1 September 1923, 4.

Another leading player in developing the blueprint and photoreproductive print was the pharmacist Frans Van der Grinten in Venlo. He owned a butter colouring factory and tried to market new products during the First World War. After speaking with a fellow pharmacist and a chimney manufacturer in dire need of good copies of his chimney designs, he turned to blueprint manufacturing. He innovated on the existing process by improving the shelf life, light sensitivity, line clarity, and blue darkness. In 1919, Van der Grinten purchased a German-made preparation machine.

The development and application of the diazotype emerged around 1920. The diazotype is a positive copy, with dark lines on a light background. Despite the diazotype's emergence, it coexisted alongside the blueprint for several decades. During the interwar period, when blueprints gradually gave way to the positive diazotype, architectural firms often used both reproduction methods. The blueprint was cheaper, and people had become accustomed to the negative image.

The last blueprint in Het Nieuwe Instituut's collection is in the archives of Bureau Merkelbach, Elling and Karsten and concerns a paint factory in Spaans Polder, Rotterdam. The design dates from 1955, meaning the blueprint's overall presence in Het Nieuwe Instituut's collection spans approximately 65 years.

Het Nieuwe Instituut's collection of hundreds of blueprints from the early period between 1890 and 1920 illustrates its introduction into architectural practice. Remarkably, hardly any primary sources concerning these late 19th-century blueprints have survived. Apart from Frijlink, architects hardly documented the use of blueprints. Training manuals and other published sources also provide very little information. The blueprint process came from another discipline, namely photography. It soon found new applications, especially in military design. At almost the same time, architects switched from manually tracing drawings to manual and then machine production of blueprints. This was due to the increasing complexity of design and execution, cost-saving considerations and new statutory requirements for copying.

The 19th and early 20th-century blueprints in Het Nieuwe Instituut's collection evidence the many experiments and beginner's mistakes from this period. In particular, the blueprints architectural offices made in-house demonstrate numerous rookie errors. During the same period, companies such as printers and bookstores ventured into blueprint making and expanded their businesses to include other forms of photographic reproduction. Other industries with plenty of chemical expertise also entered the photographic reproduction market. These blueprints often look more professional and demonstrate the degree of perfection that could be achieved with a blueprint at that time.

The follow-up research will focus on a subsequent phase of the blueprint's development once the process had been professionalised and uniform dark-blue prints became commonplace. In this new phase, the blueprint becomes a precise copy and a medium for design changes and additions that are part of the creative design process. Artist-architects such as J.H.L. Lauweriks and Theo van Doesburg experimented with the blueprint by colouring it or using it as a foundation for new designs. They also drew the positive designs on transparencies so that certain parts of the plan would stand out better on the blueprint. Examples of this are the black window areas on the transparencies, or to emphasise the white appearance of concrete facades, the wall surfaces were darkened to have the desired light and rigid appearance in the blueprint. In addition, we shall examine Theo van Doesburg's blueprints in a separate study in 2022.

In 2019, a collaboration was initiated with artist and researcher Carolin Lange. During Thursday Night Live! - Archive Explorations - on 16 December 2021 at Het Nieuwe Instituut, Lange will present her findings at the first public evening devoted to the blueprint experiment.