Lithography Blog 2

Lithography:

Lithography is a printing process which uses grease and water. The process has several steps, first ink has to be applied to an image which has already been grease treated. The ink is applied in the blank areas. Then the inked surface is printed either on paper or onto a rubber cylinder so that it can be printed several times for commercial printing.

The process was developed in 1798 by Alois Senefelder from Munich. He used limestone as his plate. ‘Lithos’ is a Greek word that means stone, therefore from the name itself, one can identify that it is stone printing. At first lithography was kept secret but then it flourished and began being used in numerous countries within a few years. The first process is to prepare the limestone. First an image is drawn with stone crayons, and then the printing surface is prepared with ink and moisture products. Then the printing itself is positioned on a press that slides or scrapes pressure. A single stone can be used for an unrestricted number of copies. The method nowadays is still the same as the original even though the process developed and changed a bit, some artist still choose to use the original method.

Lithography was popular in France during mid-1800s. Honore Daumier was one of the first artists; he was really creative and made a large amount of designs. He was also one of the first artists to use the process transfer lithography. This is when the drawing is made on paper instead of on stone. The drawing is then transferred to the stone and printed in the typical way. This method is much more suitable as it is easier to work on paper rather than stone.

After some years artists like Edgar Degas and Edouard Manet started using colour lithographs. These are called chromolithographs; they were really popular but poor in quality. In the 1890s Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec managed to upgrade the level of colour lithography. His designs and works were of a high level for that time and also inspirational. More artists followed him, one of them being Paul Gauguin.

After such progress, this method started being used for commercial bases. Some good work was being done in colour using inks but this method took a bit long to start being used for commercial purposes. The process took longer, but the outcome was brilliant. They prepared a stone for each colour that needs to be used, and then they printed one colour at a time by overlapping the colours. This method is not new to us as we find this similar process being used in offset printers nowadays.  

In fact offset printing originated in 1853 by John Strather but offset printing on paper developed in the 1900s.Offset is the most popular type of printing. It evolved through the years and started being used for several purposes; commercially and non-commercially.

In this blog, a short review of how printing developed is discussed. If it wasn’t for lithography we wouldn’t have ended with such good quality printing. Therefore I think that each era in time and every historical or artistic aspect reflects in what we find today.

Bibliography:

Brain, M., 2014. How Stuff Works. [Mqabbad]
Available at: http://www.howstuffworks.com/arts/artwork/stone-lithography.htm
[Aċċessat 11 10 2014].

Britannica., E. o. E., 2014. Encyclopaedia Britannica. [Mqabbad]
Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/343748/lithography
[Aċċessat 11 10 2014].