This engraving has been printed entirely in colours with the inks applied on a single plate (called à la poupée from the French word for doll, reflecting the shape of the ink dabbers). Under a magnifier it is possible to see that the colours are printed because they take the appearance of the marks made by the engraver, rather than showing as brush-strokes. The colours blend together where they meet, rather than overlaying each other, indicating that the colour was printed à la poupée from a single plate rather than from multiple plates. This is an ambitiously printed image for its time and predates the period of experimentation in the chalk manner and aquatint processes that came to characterise colour printing in the eighteenth century. Teyler’s colour printing involved as many as ten different colours, including ‘marbling’ effects in which colours move seamlessly from one to the other, and sometimes areas of colour as small as 2 mm.
Johannes Teyler (1648–ca. 1709) was not the printmaker but a mathematician and military engineer thought to have financed a workshop active between about 1685 and 1697. His workshop had the Privilege (exclusive right) to colour print on paper and textile in Holland and West Frisia from 1688.