Eugène Noack prints

This month's feature is a set of prints by French artist Eugène Noack (1908-1985). They are numbered in the museum collection as #1986.3.5. The four prints were commissioned and released by Sandoz, a Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical company that provided chemicals for paper companies. Noack lived in Colmar, France, for his entire life, and began painting during World War II. He contributed advertisements for Alsace's tourism market as well as designing wine labels and various parodies of the paper industry, such as the four images shown here. Noack's painting style is often likened to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, for his village scenes and lively compositions. 

The prints come with a brief description: "A humouristic look at the continuous dyeing of paper." The top left image depicts the production of retention aid, including the addition of glue ('colle' in French) and aluminum sulfite, or alum, both of which aid dyes in adhering to paper and encourage good sheet formation during papermaking. The top right image shows the production of pulp from fiber linters or recycled bales of fiber, being put into the vat from the conveyor belt on the right. The bottom left image shows retention aid (in the back left) mixing with dyes (foreground), including a container labeled Cartasol, a name-brand dye commonly used with packaging paper. The dye is then sent to the papermachine to be added to pulp, the edge of which is shown on the far right of the image. The bottom right image depicts the drying end an industrial fourdrinier papermachine, where the dry mat of paper exits the steam-drying section and is spun into large rolls to be cut down into smaller sizes later.  

We hope that you enjoyed this peek at our collection! We'll be back next month with another artifact. Have a great August!