Salt print question

Was wondering if anyone knows if salt prints were ever/often hand colored? I occasionally see enlarged hand colored portraits in bubble glass that resemble salt prints, w/ their kind of blurry patina. Just curious. Thank you.

 

salt prints hand colored

 

The enlarged portraits you refer to are probably solar enlargements, which were very often retouched and hand colored. Salted paper (using Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard’s process) proved the most suitable paper from about 1860 to the early 1880s, when the more sensitive bromide papers became available. A variety of surface textures were possible in the bromide papers, but "the most popular surface for [solar enlarged] prints was the matt surface as it could be “worked up” or coloured".

http://resources.culturalheritage.org/pmgtopics/2005-volume-eleven/11_14_Whitman.pdf

 

Thank you for the replies, and particularly the AIC link. Very interesting reading! So it appears that solar printing/enlargements required a preexisting negative, correct? I'm a little confused because I was reading about the Chicago Portrait Co. & it appears they required a customer to have a preexisting negative. Which would then require the customer have to get the negative from their local photography studio, before the photo could be enlarged using the solar enlargement process, I believe. I never realized that many of the framed bubble glass portraits that I see were actually enlargements of existing CDV's, Cabinets & other photos made from negatives!

 

Yes, like most photographic printing processes, the light values are reversed with each iteration. So to get a positive print you first need a negative. If an original negative was not available, the photographer could photograph the positive image to be copied and work from that negative, but there would probably be a loss in quality each time that was done.

 

Got it, thank you. It appears that the Chicago Portrait Co. (CPC) salesmen may have just been given a photo, by the client, then given the photo to the CPC solar printers, who then photographed, enlarged & colored. At least according to what I've read so far today about the CPC. It also appears the CPC was a bit shady. Also, taking a photo of a photo indeed might explain why many of the bubble glass photos I see appear blurry. Although that may just be the whole process, including the coloring. Anyway, thanks again for the info!