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At the Paris Expo of 1900, Paul Masson Champagne stunned the world’s oenophiles by winning its prestigious Paris Award. The Masson brand brought the California winery industry (and its Santa Clara Valley appellation) to the forefront of wine lovers worldwide. And that reputation of innovation and hard work forms the basis of Santa Clara Valley’s success in the modern world.
Leaving his family’s reputation and vineyards behind, Paul Masson came to the US in 1878 from the Burgundy region of France. Here he met up with Charles Lefranc, another transplanted Frenchman and winemaker. The two experimented using Lefranc’s imported French vines with grafts from “Mission” vines from nearby Franciscan padres. Their work resulted in great wines that brought business success and celebrity for both Masson and Lafranc in Santa Clara Valley and San Francisco. Masson eventually married Lafranc’s daughter and set up his own winery in the hills above Saratoga. His mountain winery completed in 1905 was named “La Cresta.” The 1906 earthquake destroyed most of the winery and in rebuilding the he acquired the 12th century portal from the ruins of St. Patrick’s Cathedral of San Jose.
From this location he produced fine wines and even supplied sacramental wines during Prohibition. With most of his fortune gone and now a widower by the time Prohibition was repealed, he sold the mountain estate to Martin Ray in 1936. Ray, who had worked at the winery as a youngster, kept the Masson brand and reported that Paul Masson visited his former mountain estate up until his death at 82 in 1943.Martin Ray eventually sold the Masson Brand to the Seagram’s. It’s had several owners since then. An amphitheater was added and the property began its second life as a concert venue.
In the late 1950’s, the Masson brand needed an easily accessible location for its products. So it hired the notable architect John Savage Boles to design a modern tasting cellar to be located on Saratoga Ave. Bolles, noted for Bay Region Modernism, contributed more than 500 different structures including Candlestick Park, the Macy’s at Valley Fair, IBM buildings in SJ, and the Fremont GM plant. The famed photographer Ansel Adams documented the construction of the Champagne Cellars in an exhibition which eventually appeared at the Smithsonian.
The Champagne Cellars were razed in the early 1990’s for a housing development. While the Champagne Cellars have been replaced by housing, the historic Paul Masson Mountain Winery still stands in homage to the legacy and success of the Santa Clara Valley agricultural and winery innovators. On many nights when the lights are visible on the hill off Pierce Road, it’s easy to imagine the wonderful events that have taken place up there over the years. The Mountain Winery still epitomizes fine living with music, entertainment, and of course, a glass of champagne.
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Duotones are a process for presenting an image/photo using only two colors or two color tonalities. One color provides the background and main coloration while the second color generally is used for complimentary or contrasting highlighting. Designers use this process to create striking black and white tonal images, aged-looking sepia tones or brash contemporary color effects. When done using the common black and white tones, this process produces an effect like the older black and white photos. Another popular color scheme is to produce a duotone that looks like the older sepia photographs. While the black and white and sepia duotones are very common, the designer is not limited to to these two color schemes since any color pairing can be used to achieved the desired artistic effect. The photos below, from akvis.com, show an original black and white photo on the left and its resulting sepia duotone on the right.
Duotones work best when the initial photo have some interesting details that will benefit from this process of highlighting. I see this particularly useful in landscapes, images of buildings and images that have a lot of angularity to them that the second coloration can emphasize. Another application would be for highlighting one item or aspect in a photo such as a white crane amidst a dark building or landscape.
One reason duotones have had a resurgence of interest recently is that inkjet printers just can't print the many tonalities of blacks from just one cartridge. Using Photoshop to create duotones, or even tritones and quadtones, a wider range of black tonalities can be achieved. One advantage to using this method is printing cost containment. Having an item printed in many colors can be rather expensive as I discovered when I had the newsletter printed for my homeowner's group. I've never had a job printed commercially in color such as a photographic quality poster, but I can imagine that it would be very expensive. By limiting the color ranges to just two, this should cut the costs substantially.
However there are challenges in doing this. As an graphic artist creating a great duotone I rely on the images being reproduced the same as what I'm seeing on my own monitor regardless of my monitor's settings. But, each printer has a unique calibration and library of color outputs. Therefore, what gets produced from a printer may not match what I see on my monitor. Therefore I can't be guaranteed that a printing of my great work will be reproduced the same as what I've produced. The same is true for placing my duotone on a web site. The consumer of the website might have different monitor settings which will not reproduce the image as I intend. Either way it is challenging to get exacting color reproduction but for a professional project, then the designer needs to work with the printer to make sure that the colorations are as intended. But these issues are probably the same whether I'm producing a duotone, monotone or full color item. There is no 100% certainty in exact reproduction from my original to the reproduction.
