Thornton-Pickard "Artist" Photographic Enlarger

Thornton Pickard 'Artist' Photographic Enlarger, used at John Rylands Library.

This is a Thornton-Pickard ”Artist” enlarger, used to make photographs from a negative.

Thornton-Pickard was a camera manufacturer, founded in Manchester 1888 by John Thornton and Edgar Pickard, but based in Altrincham from 1891. The new company’s products were initially designed by Thornton, who had already been manufacturing photographic equipment under his own name. Despite Edgar Pickard’s death in 1897 and John Thornton’s resignation in 1898, the firm gradually grew to become an important camera manufacturer in the years leading up to the First World War. As well as cameras the firm manufactured a range of photographic equipment, including camera shutters, magic lantern projectors, and photographic enlargers, like this one.

A photographic enlarger is used to make a finished photograph from a photographic negative, the plate or film made by a camera, on which light and dark areas are reversed. The negative is put into the centre part of the enlarger and light shines through from a lightbulb at the rear. This projects an image of the negative through the front of the enlarger, onto a piece of light sensitive paper coated in chemicals. This makes a copy of the negative on the paper, on which the dark and light parts of the image are reversed again back to how they were originally, which is then fixed to the paper in a chemical process to produce a finished photograph.

Thornton-Pickard produced several different types of enlarger over the years. The “Artist” Enlarger was sold by them in the mid-1920s, fitted with adjustable bellows to allow it be extended as necessary, and offered with a range of different lenses. If fitted with a suitable adapter, the “Artist” could also be used as a magic lantern style slide projector. This particular example was used at the John Ryland’s Library in Manchester.