"A wonderful and very rare work ... especially appealing for its large size and bold color plates, which are in fact not chromolithographs but chromotypographs. The plates shown in this book represent 'the latest and most improved styles of exterior decoration.' As was the custom with these books, it shows two basic houses: a perspective view of a house with two story gable and porch and a side elevation of a house with a spiky steeple-tower and five lightning rods. The key to each plate gives the colors for body, shingles, stone, trimming, and roof. Also contains plates of four barns with different color schemes and one 'L' planned house. This latter house, though shown with a Victorian bracketed cornice and chimneys, is essentially a house of an earlier (Greek Revival) period and is painted white, the only white house in the whole book. The final plate in the book is a large chart of 45 mounted paint-chips, Rogers' best ready-mixed paints. Detroit White Lead Works was a huge operation (a birdseye view of the factory is shown on the reverse of the last plate)"--Antiquarian bookseller's description.

Some of the plates bear the legend of 'Western Eng. Co. Detroit'. The color plates were printed from relief blocks in a series of impressions. Michael Twyman states that "chromotypography became the most serious competitor to chromolithography later in the nineteenth century"--History of chromolithography, page 317.

Oblong folio, original printed cloth over-boards, bound with two bolts. Gilt stamped title on cover.

Detroit White Lead Works > Catalogs.

Architecture, Domestic > Pictorial works.

Barns > Pictorial works.

Paint > Catalogs.

House painting > Equipment and supplies > Catalogs.

Color printing > Specimens.