Ink could not hold the colour of skin.

So Vienna drew it on stone, painted every impression by hand, and where print gave up, cast the surface in wax. One teaching problem, worked at for fifty years.

The piece to read first

The atlas came out in pieces for twenty years

It was issued in parts by subscription over two decades, which is why complete sets are rare and why no two are quite alike.

Read it

A conservator at a museum bench looking up from a wax cast under an inspection lamp — A wax cast is still a working object: it is examined, supported and repaired.

Institutions our research sits beside.

Institutions that keep these atlases and moulages in hand.

Institutions whose work meets ours in the clinic, the collection, and the print room.

A tray of watercolour pans and brushes beside printed sheets

The signature move

Colour was added after printing, by hand

Each impression was coloured individually by workers following a master copy, which is why two copies of the same plate differ.

The colour problem

The colourists worked from a pattern copy, matching every sheet to it by eye.

The atlas came out in pieces for twenty years

Issued in fascicles by subscription, bound by whoever bought it. Four pages on how a reference book actually reached the people who needed it.

A reading-room table seen along its length, bound volumes open on cradles — Where the parts ended upMost surviving copies are consulted in reading rooms, and no two of them collate the same way.Photo: NYC Public Library Research Room Jan 2006-1- 3 · Wikimedia Commons

A drawing board with a part-finished lithographic drawing and crayons

Anton Elfinger, who drew them

The plates were drawn by an artist who also worked as a caricaturist, and the draughtsmanship is why they still read.

A wet-plate camera and holder on a stand in a studio

Why photography could not do it yet

Early photographic processes could not render the colour and texture that distinguishes one condition from another.

Engraving of an R Hoe & Co patent lithographic power press with gears and rollers

Printing

The stone and the press

Lithography prints from a drawn stone rather than a cut block, which is what made fine tonal work reproducible at all.

Printing

The workshop behind the plate

Printer, draughtsman and colourists were a trade, and their names appear in the imprint where anyone looks.

All fifteen pages

Loose printed gatherings in a paper wrapper on a desk

Ink could not hold the colour of skin.

The atlas came out in pieces for twenty years

Institutions that keep these atlases and moulages in hand.

Colour was added after printing, by hand