Charles Troedel (1835-1906), born in Hamburg, was working in Norway when he was headhunted by AW Schuhkrafft, a Melbourne printer who seeking European craftsmen. Schuhkrafft engaged both Troedel and Robert Wendel (known to be active between 1860 and 1881), who was an outstanding lithographic artist and draftsman. Arriving in Melbourne in the Great Britain in early 1860, the pair worked for Schuhkrafft for three years. In 1863 Troedel set up his own lithographic printing business in Collins Street, Melbourne, installing the press he had brought with him from Europe. His first great success was the Melbourne Album, a book of views of the city that he put together with Wendel. He followed up with a series of chromolithograph Pictures by Nicholas Chevalier in 1865-1866. He opened a branch in Sydney in 1877 (producing a New South Wales Album in 1878) and another in the early 1890s, but both ventures were comparatively short-lived. Between 1879 and 1884, Troedel carried out the lithography for von Mueller’s Eucalyptographia: A descriptive atlas of the eucalypts of Australia and the adjoining islands. His firm won a silver medal for lithographic printing at the Calcutta Exhibition in 1884. In the late nineteenth century, several artists who later became famous - including Arthur Streeton, Percy Leason, Charles Wheeler and Lionel Lindsay - worked for Troedel. Though he made his name with the production of art prints, Troedel also produced packaging and labels for food products, tobacco and beverages, bank forms, share certificates, posters and sheet music. Perpetuated by several of Charles’s many sons, and further descendants, the firm ended its run as Troedel Docucopy, which went into liquidation in 2013.
