A different principle of printing
Before lithography, printing methods worked in one of two ways. Relief printing, such as woodcuts and movable type, inks raised surfaces. Intaglio printing, such as engraving and etching, inks lines cut below the surface and wipes the rest clean. Lithography, invented in Bavaria in the 1790s, works on a flat surface and depends on a simple chemical fact: oil and water do not mix.
The word comes from Greek roots meaning stone and writing. The process is also called planographic, meaning printed from a plane.
Senefelder’s invention
Alois Senefelder was a Bavarian actor and playwright born in Prague in 1771. According to his own later account, he was looking for a cheap way to print his plays and music, because the cost of engraving or typesetting was high. He experimented with etching on copper, then with stone, and the date of the key discovery is usually given as 1796 to 1798. Sources vary slightly, and the story depends heavily on Senefelder’s recollections, which were published in 1818 in his book on the art of lithography.
He used a fine-grained limestone quarried near Solnhofen in Bavaria. The stone is smooth, even in texture and absorbs both grease and water.
How the process works
In outline, the steps were:
- The surface of the stone was ground flat and smooth.
- The artist drew on the stone with a greasy crayon or ink, or painted with a greasy liquid. The image was drawn the right way around for the artist but printed reversed.
- The stone was treated with a mixture of gum arabic and a weak acid, which fixed the greasy image and made the blank areas hold water.
- Before each print, the stone was dampened with water. The wet areas repelled the oily ink, while the greasy drawing accepted it.
- Paper was laid on the inked stone and run through a press under pressure.
The result could be a faithful reproduction of a crayon or brush drawing, including delicate tones that were hard to achieve in engraving. Because the artist drew directly, there was no need to learn engraving skills. The stones were heavy and expensive, however, and could be ground clean and reused.
Spread across Europe
Senefelder set up presses in Munich and tried to commercialize the process, including partnerships in England and France. Early uses included sheet music, maps, commercial forms and posters. Lithography spread rapidly through the early nineteenth century because it was cheaper than engraving for many jobs, and print shops adopted it for work that had once required skilled engravers.
Artists took it up as well. Francisco Goya made a series of lithographs in Bordeaux in the 1820s, and the French artist Honore Daumier produced thousands of satirical lithographs for newspapers. Lithography also suited posters, which became a major art form in the late nineteenth century, helped by cheaper wood pulp paper that made large print runs affordable. Jules Cheret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among others, designed vivid lithographic posters for Paris entertainment venues.
Color
Early lithographs were mostly in one or two colors. In the 1830s, French printers developed chromolithography, which uses a separate stone for each color and prints them in register, one over another. Godefroy Engelmann received a patent in France in 1837. Chromolithographs could contain a dozen or more colors and became a popular way to reproduce paintings, make advertisements and decorate packaging, cards and labels. In America, the firm of Currier and Ives sold many hand-colored lithographic prints of scenes, which are now collected as historical images.
Offset and the modern era
In the early twentieth century, printers began transferring the inked image from the stone or metal plate to a rubber blanket and then to paper. This offset process, developed independently by several people, including Ira Rubel in the United States around 1904, reduced wear on the plate and printed well on rough paper. Metal plates, usually aluminum, replaced stones in most work. Offset lithography became the dominant commercial printing method for the twentieth century, used for newspapers, magazines and books. Related technology still prints much commercial work, although digital printing, including laser printers, now handles many short runs.
Photography and lithography
Lithography was also tied to the early history of photography. Nicephore Niepce, whose heliograph is often named as the first lasting photograph, began his experiments with lithographic stones. Later photomechanical processes made it possible to transfer photographs onto plates for printing.
Caveats
Details of Senefelder’s early work, including the precise date and some claims about earlier experiments by others, rest largely on his own account. Historians generally accept that he developed the practical process, though different regions reported similar attempts, and the commercial history includes disputes and failed ventures.