Hero jam jar labels.

Hero jam jar labels.

Esslingen am Neckar, Germany,

ca. 1950.

Proofs commissioned from Hans Ulrich in 2006 by RBS.

This mid-20th-century lithographic stone comes from the Steindruckerei of Hans Ulrich, a German lithographer who created proofs demonstrating seven color separations used to print this jam jar label. Pale red underlies all of the succeeding colors: yellow, blue, red II, sign blue, grey, and, lastly, black. Each color was printed successively, in this exact order, onto one large sheet of paper. After going through all seven rounds of registered printing, the sheet would be cut, resulting in a stack of multi-color labels.

From the collection of Rare Book School