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Photogravures, Electrotypes, Offset-lithographs, Photo-etching, Heliogravure, Zinc-etching and indeed several other processes - i've lumped them all together here, because although they are technically different processes, they are all infact mechanical to the main degree and the effect is very similiar.
All of these methods require the original artwork to be chemically or photographically transferred onto some kind of metal plate, i use the term photographically loosely, i mean that a craftsman is no longer used to create the design more or less by hand onto the printing plate or block, it is now done chemically using light sensitive chemicals which generally etch the design onto a metal plate.
This plate is often copper but would normally be electoplated with zinc or steel or some other hard wearing compound in order to make it more long lasting, the printing is faster and more accurate, leading of course to a cheaper end product which can generally be printed in higher volumes.
Naturally as colour printing became cheaper, it was used more often, and should therefore be more readily available today. Books began to appear with more colour illustrations, some of which feature dogs, but less than you would think, although there are a couple of pet encycopedias from the period that are the source of some very fine prints.
Dog prints of this type and from this period should be cheaper and more readily available, we would normally have quite a few in any list that we send out.
The problem is more that some breeds that were fashionable then such as the Pekingese are not so popular today and conversely as well of course, this means that prints of dog breeds such as Pekingese, Clumber Spaniels and Bulldogs are quite common, but others like Great Danes, Welsh Terriers, Lhasso Apsos and so on are very much rarer and some breeds cannot be found at all..
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