Cowtan & Son

Cowtan & Son turned out finely detailed prints in the first decades of the 1800s, selling to collectors who wanted crisp city views and portraits turned into black-and-white sheets. One of their plates, Untitled, shows London shopfronts and street life frozen in precise line work around 1800–1825, a time when print shops clustered near St Paul’s Churchyard. To see how they translated buildings into ink, tap Untitled in the gallery.