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Show 132 28. The price of even the least expensive format represented an enormous expenditure for subscribers. For comparison, Bodmer's monthly salary while working on Travels' aquatints never exceeded one hundred Rhine thalers. As Dr. William Orr has mentioned in his biography of Bodmer in Karl Bodmer's America, the cost of the least expensive French edition of Travels was more than the average French worker made in one year. 29. Acta 1, no. 262 and Acta 1, no. 18. Subscribers were offered the choice of five different editions of the prints and Holscher printed five hundred copies of text in anticipation of a moderately healthy response. These five editions were composed as follows: edition #1: on royal paper, uncolored, including one colored map; two hundred copies of text. edition #2: chine colle, uncolored, including one colored map; fifty copies of text. edition #3: sixty-one uncolored prints, twenty colored, one colored map. one hundred copies of text. edition #4: sixty-one chine colle, twenty colored, one colored map; fifty copies of text. edition #5: a deluxe edition, all colored on imperial vellum paper, one colored map; one hundred copies of text. Chine colle paper, a fine tissue laminate on a heavier paper support, was thought by collectors to be a more elegant and exclusive process of printing than those impressions printed on ordinary copperplate paper. It is true that the smooth texture of this "Chinese" paper allowed a fine and even printing of the impression; however, the desirability of this process was mostly related to its exclusiveness and to the additional prestige of acquiring prints produced by this more expensive process. 30. Several early prints were produced under the name of Finot & Bougeard. Finot was Bougeard's predecessor. Only two prints, Tableau 18, Bison-Dance of the Mandan Indians, and the first state of Tableau 42, Fort Mackenzie August 28th 1833. were printed by another printing house; these tableaus, both produced in 1842, were printed by the firm of Chardon Aine et Aze. 31. With the exception of the chine colle prints, it is likely that only those printed on imperial vellum paper were originally handcolored. It is possible |