- Collection Spotlights
- Australia's Prime Ministers
- Restoration of The Story of the Kelly Gang
- Mike and Stefani
- Film Connection
- 1967 Referendum
- Australians in WWI
- For The Term of His Natural Life
- Jedda
- The Sentimental Bloke
- Kingsford-Smith
- Wake in Fright
- Waltzing Matilda
- Theatre of the Mind
- Women In Early Radio
- Theatres & Cinemas
- Paget Plate Discovery
- Soldiers of the Cross
- Cecil Holmes
- Ray Barrett
- Shirley Ann Richards
- Graham Kennedy
- A tribute to Charles Chauvel
- A tribute to Joan Long
- Lottie Lyell - Photo Play Artiste
Very Rare Paget Plates Discovered
Conservators Darren Weinert and Brooke Shannon, of the NFSA’s Still Image Services team, were surprised and delighted recently to discover a number of Paget plates in the Collection.
Close up of paget plate showing the distinctive
diamond shapes
The Paget process was a very early colour photography process patented in Britain in 1912 and marketed by the Page Prize Plate Company in 1913. The process saw moderate success and was discontinued in the early 1920s, which makes the plates very rare.
The system used a glass plate, which was a standard black-and-white photographic plate and a coloured screen, comprised of a series of red, green and blue filters laid down in a regular pattern of diamond shapes, called a reseau. The screen was placed inside the camera in front of, and in contact with, the emulsion. The exposure was then made through the coloured screen and the negative was then processed.
The resultant negative looked like a standard black-and-white negative, although with a noticeable crosshatch patterning. The negative was contact printed to produce a black-and-white positive image and a viewing screen with more intense colour filters was used in exact register with the developed positive plate to produce a composite colour image, the final Paget Plate.
Paget Plate coloured screen
Still Image Services Officer Brooke Shannon says that the plates were discovered in a collection of family images by Franklyn Barrett. Barrett was a film cameraman and director, most famously known for directing the Australian films, The Breaking of the Drought (1920) and A Girl of the Bush (1921).
The collection contained only seven of the plates and these are the only known Paget Plates in the NFSA collection, although there may be others previously presumed to be ordinary black-and-white slides.
Brooke says that the Paget plates, which are beautiful to look at, are a very important discovery.
Collection Item 766080: Image showing Harrie (R) aged c10 years old,
and two other girls of the same age, sitting together on wooden garden
chairs, grass underfoot and trees in background.
Collection Item 766146: Image showing wife Mabel Barrett (R), perhaps
Mabel's sister (centre) and Harrie Barrett (L) sitting on the grass in
an outdoor setting, pram to Harrie's left and baby doll with Mabel.
