2-982-511 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Tesselated Roman Pavement at Dorchester, 1858. '...a very beautiful and perfect Roman pavement was discovered [in the grounds of the County Prison]. The pavement measured twenty feet square...Many portions of Roman pavement have been formed near the same spot, which marks the locality as having been the residence of some persons of rank during the Roman occupation...Mr. Pouncy's carbon printing [has been] pronounced by Professor Owen, at Leeds, to be...the great discovery of the year - by means of which process the facsimile of the pavement was obtained: "Mr John Pouncy, of this town, has succeeded in producing wonderful facsimiles of this interesting relic in photography and colours. Mr. Pouncy has taken perfect photographs by each process, and coloured them with all the care imaginable...we thus possess an exact miniature of the pavement, where each particular tessera stands articulately on end, the exact outline of its rugged edge sharply definite to the eye, although there are some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them in the mosaic composition...the difference in clearness and in beauty betwixt the finest attainable ordinary photographic products and those of Mr. Pouncy's process of carbon printing could not well be more surprising".' From "Illustrated London News", 1858.