William Gallimore's Transfer Prints & Proofs for Ceramics

William Gallimore (1807?-1891) was a designer and engraver. He did considerable work for the Wedgwoods, Enoch Wood, John Alcock, John Ridgeway, and other English potters. He died in 1891 in Trenton, New Jersey at the home of his son, William W. Gallimore, who was also in the pottery business, as were his children.

The collection consists mainly of transfer prints and proofs from copper plates engraved by Gallimore and others, together with some original drawings from which the engravings were made, for potteries in Staffordshire, England. Pastoral scenes, exotic landscapes, elaborate architecture, genre scenes, floral and geometric designs, and miscellaneous scenes are represented. 

Transfer-printed designs on thin tissue paper were used to apply decoration to pottery, a method popular in England especially in the 19th century. After the colored design was transferred to the pottery the tissue paper was washed away. The tissue paper prints in this collection were never applied and offer us a rare glimpse of the process.