Talk:Decalcomania

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I don't know what 24.168.92.117 means by "vaild nor historical evidence to prove his, 'inventions'", but see for example http://www.freewebs.com/genovese/parent%20direct/Investigations1.html . Is it the existence of photographic decalcomanias 24.168.92.117 is debating or Richard Genovese's invention of the method? --Daniel C. Boyer 23:04, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Decalcomania was not originated in the 1930s as noted in the main article and did not begin as a surrealist technique, though it may certainly have been taken up by the surrealists as described. Writing in 1929, a US army officer describes a trip to Delmonico's restaurant in New York. He eats in a room with "a bewitching wallpaper, with small, gaily colored pictures, no two alike, applied after the manner of decalcomania." (See Lately Thomas, Delmonico's, Houghton Mifflin 1967).

Further research reveals an article "Decalcomania" (Harper's Bazaar, April 4, 1868, 1, 23) suggesting an even earlier, Russian origin for this technique.

[edit] Proposed Merge

I'm against a merge. Decal and decalcomania have distinct usage (e.g. see the Wictionary entry). --Kkmurray 03:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Decalcomania is definitely distinct from "decal" in general. I added a museum link that explains it as a design movement Fingal 23:38, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Decalcomania & Lithography

Hi. Is there a difference between these two? They seem so similar as to suggest this is where a merger is needed. ThanxTheriac 17:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Confusion between fine art technique and industrial reproduction method

The above comments suggest there is ongoing confusion between the art technique which produces a single, unique image, and the industrial method which is used to produce many copies of an image. This is also shown in the following exchange from my talk page:

Apologies, I just restored a link in the Decalcomania article, but didn't leave a proper comment. I wanted to suggest that the museum article link is more appropriately about the decalcomania/industrial transfers early design movement, as opposed to decals in general. Fingal 23:50, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Strange, to me it seemed a much more appropriate link for Decal than Decalcomania. The latter article is pretty much about the technique to produce a one-of-a-kind result, especially in fine art. This is pretty much the opposite of the industrial printing technique of producing many copies of a graphic, i.e. producing 'decals' or 'transfers'. The museum link is pretty much about the history of that industrial technique in Canada, and thus seems more appropriate for Decal. I think I'll copy this discussion to the Decalcomania talk page. -R. S. Shaw 03:19, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Both usages of decalcomania involve transferring something (hence the word, from the French for 'to transfer'), but refer to different objects of transfer. In the industrial case, the primary transfer meant is that of an already prepared image on a special surface (the decal) to some object (such as a model or tableware). In the fine art case, the transfer seems generally to be of wet pigment (such as fingerpaint) without finished form onto a normal art surface such as paper, in order to create a new image, one that is not a copy of an existing image. The nature of the image thus formed is highly dependent on the exact manner in which the actual transfer happens (at least so I have gathered from poking about a bit). This is different from the use of a decal, where the transfer process produces the same image each time, with only minor variations such as crooked alignment on the object.

I think there need to be separate articles on these two meanings since their commonality is mostly limited to the name, not their natures. There should be some clarification and cross reference in each article, and maybe their needs to be a disambiguation article also. -R. S. Shaw 03:53, 11 August 2007 (UTC)