The sepia postcards show scenes of Watford High Street in the days before pound shops, bars and cars, Watford Market when men in flat caps crowded among the shop-front stalls, and the canal lock when the lock-keeper still lived in the adjacent cottage.

Tring artist Sheila de Rosa has taken a selection of historic photographs and postcards of Watford and the surrounding villages and made solar plate etchings from them for this month’s exhibition at the Little Gallery Tea Room at Watford Museum.

“I went through the museum’s archive looking for inspiration,“ says Sheila, who studied at West Herts College and the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield and who now teaches printmaking at both.

“My criteria was aesthetics because the process I use needs a certain kind of quality to translate well to etching plates.“

Sheila’s etching process uses UV light to transfer the images from the original photograph to a metal, usually zinc or copper plate, and she then engraves the plates using non-toxic chemicals.

As well as images of the high street, old market and canal lock, Sheila has made etchings of the old Leather Seller’s Arms pub that used to stand in the high street, Wheatsheaf Cottages and Watford Museum.

For many of the postcards, Sheila made a plate for the photograph on the front and another for the text on the back and then put the two on top of each other, so the message appears woven through the picture.

“I really like the messages on the back of postcards,“ Sheila explains, “and wanted to include them in the final print. I also love the handwriting that people used to have in the old days.“

  • Little Gallery Tearoom, Watford Museum, Lower High Street, Watford from Saturday, August 24 until Saturday, September 28. Details: 01923 232297, watford museum.org.uk. Sheila will be taking part in Herts Open Studios in September. Details: hvag.org.uk