2-995-810 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

A book cover formed by Martin's Ceramic Papier-maché process, 1860. A type of '...plastic fibrous material...capable of being most advantageously and economically manufactured into a numerous class of articles of high artistic merit. This invention, which has been patented by Mr. J. C. Martin, of Barnes, has for its object the production in a plastic material of imitations of wood carvings, from which it is scarcely distinguishable, and that could be readily moulded, subsequently hardening into a close-grained, hard, tough, and durable substance, resembling wood, admitting of an after process of carving to produce the undercuts, and susceptible of the highest finish. The grain of various woods may be very exactly imitated by a proper and careful mixture of differently-coloured portions of the substance. The material of which this new substance is chiefly composed is paper, or rather the fibrous pulp of which paper is made, combined - among various other ingredients, with a resinous soap (that is, resin dissolved in alkali), to which is due its plastic qualities, and which enables it to be moulded, without the addition of an earthy or claylike substance, adds to its strength, and admits of the subsequent process of carving'. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.