Introduced by Louis Blanquart-Évrard in 1850, this silver chloride printing-out paper is coated with salted egg white and sensitized with silver nitrate. Albumen prints present a fine, warm-brown hued image on a thin paper base, although toning with gold chloride gives an aubergine-black image colour and prevents deterioration from residual sulphur compounds in the egg-white coating. Albumenized paper was manufactured from 1855, and sold ready sensitized after 1872. It was superseded by gelatin and collodion papers by about 1890, although its use persisted until the late 1920s. It was revived by the Chicago Albumen Company in the 1980s.

Anon., Italian Venice, late 19th century. Albumen print

— Hope Kingsley

The Oxford Companion to the Photograph. Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.