Visual glossary

Paper printed in ink or paste-colours from carved wood-blocks or the blocks used for textile printing where parts of the pattern were created with metal nails or strips. For papers blocked in multiple colours, the individual colours were printed one after another with a drying process in between each colour.

Alternative labels include: Dutch gilt paper, gilt paper, Augsburg paper. The term brocade paper is somewhat complicated as it covers a variety of different types of embossed decorated paper, many of which themselves use more than one decorative technique. It was developed in Augsburg at the end of the seventeenth century, at more or less the same time as bronze varnish paper, and created the most expensive decorated papers of their time, which were sold all over Europe.

Paper decorated by printing with carved wood-blocks (block-printing) on a printing press with a mixture of varnish and metallic colours (bronze-varnish), which were often made from a metal powder with a distinctive bronze colour. The varnish was used like a printing ink but bronze-varnish papers usually have no printing impression, though the varnish left by the block sometimes shows squeezed edges.