These progress proofs were taken from six blocks – a key block and five colour – to build up a complex image. Edmund Evans (1826–1905) was considered the finest colour printer in London. He had a workshop employing about 30 people but maintained strict control over the process, determining the tones and colours himself. By this later period, he had progressed to using six colour blocks: dark brown, a flesh tint for faces and hands, red, blue, yellow and grey. A registration frame ensured that each block printed in the same place on the page so that the constituent colours of the design matched up.

Kate Greenaway (1846–1901) made the design drawing (also in the V&A), which was reproduced onto each block using a photographic method developed by Thomas Bolton in the mid-1860s, which involved coloured filters to allow separation of the individual colours. These were then translated by engravers as lines, hatchings, or dots or dashes. Greenaway allowed no one other than Evans to engrave her illustrations.