Alfred Wehnert:

London 1861

The preface makes it plain that the illustrations of this book, “which may be called electrographs, have not been made in the usual way, by means of wood engraving, but the artist’s own drawings, upon prepared metal plates, have been electrotyped, recently discovered by Mr. W.J. Linton, which bids fair to be of much service in book-decoration.” But only the full-page designs by Linton’s close friend Alfred Wehnert had been reproduced by this New Process, the smaller text – illustrations, which had been drawn by Linton’s assistant William Luson Thomas, were engraved in the conventional way. Luson Thomas would play a leading role in the future promotion of Linton’s vision of a more artistic use of xylography.