Karen's Dag workshop response

For me the matter of polishing the plates really stood out. Our task was to polish the silver plated copper plates to a high shine. The plates were so delicate that we could only handle them by the edges with gloves on, and we used paper masks to avoid breathing on the surface. I probably polished the longest, I just couldn't get the hang of what I was supposed to do. It was very odd to be doing a critical task that I had no way of knowing how to do correctly, nor any way to judge the results. We were to remove any tarnish, easy, you can see that. But then we were to remove a certain milky colored cast on the plate, but I really couldn't see what this was. I was supposed to apply a certain amount of buffing pressure, not so much as to scratch the plate, but enough to remove the milkiness that I couldn't see. I felt that I was scratching more than polishing. In any case, I guess I managed ok, because although my Dag. was underexposed, it did come out.

During the very long day it took us to complete all the steps of the process, I kept thinking about how it would have been to run a commercial Dag. studio. Apparently you could have charged the equivalent of $100 - $500 per Dag. depending on the size of the plate. How many would you need to do in a day to be profitable? How many could you do in a day? Plates may have required up to 4 hours to polish properly. Who did this work? I suspect low wage workers, perhaps female relatives.