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The
invention of Alois Senefelder in Germany around 1798, lithography
was the first new method of printing for over three hundred
years. Unlike relief and intaglio processes, it is a planographic
process based on the chemical antipathy of grease and water.
Lines are drawn with greasy ink or crayon on a specially prepared
limestone, which is then moistened with water; an oily printer's
ink, applied to the surface of the stone with a roller, is
attracted to the image. This is then printed on to the paper
under pressure. Lithographs printed in colour, or chromolithographs,
were achieved by repeating this process with a separate stone
for each colour, taking care to keep the image register each
time it went through the press.
Lithography
was introduced into England in 1801, and, after a slow start,
emerged as a popular process during the 1820s. The most important
English treatise was Charles Joseph Hullmandel's The Art
of Drawing on Stone (1824), and it was he who developed,
together with his apt pupil James Duffield Harding, a range
of techniques which particularly suited the work of topographical
artists. Success in printing tints and tonal shades led to
a bolder use of colour, initially printing flat areas of different
colours side by side, and later achieving more subtle effects
by overprinting.
By 1851,
the year of the Great Exhibition, both lithography and chromolithography
had come of age. It was recognised as a versatile, cost-effective
method of printing both text and illustrations in a wide range
of artistic, scholarly and commercial productions, from topographical
drawings to technical manuals, to persuasive advertisements,
music covers and manuscript facsimiles. Gradually, however,
experiments with photographic processes led to the development
of simpler photolithographic techniques, which, as the century
drew to a close, replaced the pure art of drawing on stone.
R.
J. Goulden
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