Alfred Dawson was a well-known British artist and etcher who developed a photogravure method in 1871 which was not patented, as was his 1872 non photographic etching method. The process as explained by H. W. Rowland (Anthony’s 1891 pg. 182) was that a fully exposed and developed wet plate negative was placed on a leveling stand and coated with a solution of gelatin and when dry was stripped from the plate and the film side was covered with a very thin coat of varnish. While the varnish was still tacky it was dusted with a metallic powder. A mold was next made by coating a glass plate with bichromated gelatin and then exposed under the grained negative for two to four hours in the shade. After exposure it was washed free of the bichromate and allowed to dry. This was then coated with a deposit of gold to render it conductive. The edges covered in tin foil and the back with wax. This was connected to a Bunsen’s battery but just before the mold was placed in the copper solution it was dipped into tepid water for a minute or so and then carefully placed in the copper solution so that no bubbles would form. When well covered with copper it was transferred to a larger vat with a modified Smeis’(sic) battery and allowed to remain for four to six weeks. When it reached the desired thickness it was removed and the copper plate was separated from the glass-gelatin mold, filed smooth, trimmed and beveled. By the late 1880’s Peter Henry Emerson (Naturalistic Photography pgs. 208-9) noted that Dawson’s plates, in conjunction with Walter L. Colls, were bitten rather than grown and so possibly only plates prior to about 1880 were done in the original process.