← Back to home

Lithography

Right, let's get this over with. You want to know about lithography. Fascinating, isn't it? A process built on the charming principle that oil and water fundamentally despise each other. Much like certain people I know.

Printing Technique

This article, as you so helpfully pointed out, is about a printing method. Not rocks, despite the name. And certainly not that microscopic tinkering they call microlithography. It's about how you get an image from a flat surface onto something else, using chemistry and a healthy dose of stubbornness.

Here's a lithograph, if you must know. Charles Marion Russell's "The Custer Fight" from 1903. Notice how the tones just… fade? Like a poorly kept promise. It's part of a larger narrative, the History of printing, a story filled with more ink and ambition than you'd care to imagine.

Techniques

The lineage of printing techniques is a long and frankly exhausting one. We've got woodblock printing from ages ago, then movable type came along, followed by the dark arts of Intaglio (printmaking) around 1430. Then the Printing press appeared, a machine that probably thought it was the bee's knees. Etching, Mezzotint, Relief printing—all variations on a theme of transferring something from one surface to another. Aquatint, then finally, the star of our current dismal show: Lithography in 1796. Followed by its gaudy cousin, Chromolithography, in 1837. The Rotary press sped things up, and then came the less glamorous methods like Hectograph and Mimeograph. Offset printing, a significant evolution, arrived in 1875. We've also got Hot metal typesetting, Daisy wheel printing, Photostat and rectigraph, Screen printing, Spirit duplicator, Dot matrix printing, the ubiquitous Xerography, Spark printing, Phototypesetting, Inkjet printing, Dye-sublimation, Laser printing, Thermal printing, Solid ink printing, Thermal-transfer printing, and of course, the modern marvel that is 3D printing, and the umbrella term Digital printing. It's a veritable parade of methods, each trying to outdo the last.

Lithography

Lithography, for those who need it spelled out, comes from the Ancient Greek words λίθος (líthos) for 'stone' and γράφω (gráphō) for 'to write'. It's a planographic printing method, which means the printing surface is flat. The whole magic trick hinges on the fact that oil and water don't mix. A clever concept, really.

Originally, it used a stone, usually a lithographic limestone, or later, a metal plate with a smooth face. Invented in 1796 by a German chap named Alois Senefelder, who was apparently an author and actor—a jack of all trades, master of none, perhaps? It was first used for things like sheet music and maps. Practical, I suppose. It can put text or images on paper, or other surfaces if you're feeling adventurous. A "lithograph" refers to a print made this way, but only for art or historical documents, not for the endless stream of commercial junk produced today.

The traditional method involved drawing an image with something greasy, like oil, fat, or wax, onto the surface of a flat limestone. Then, a mixture of weak acid and gum arabic was applied. This "etch" treated the stone, making the areas not covered by grease more receptive to water—hydrophilic, if you want to sound smart. When it was time to print, the stone was dampened. Water stuck to the etched parts, pushing the oil away. Then, oil-based ink was rolled on. It only stuck to the greasy drawing. Finally, this inked image was transferred to paper. Still used for fine art prints, apparently.

Modern commercial lithography is a bit more sophisticated, or perhaps just more industrial. The image is transferred onto a flexible plastic or metal plate using a polymer coating. These plates can be made using photographic processes, leading to the term "photolithography," though that also applies to some obscure microelectronics manufacturing process. And then there's offset printing, which is lithography's slightly indirect cousin. The ink goes from the plate to a rubber blanket, and then to the paper. It’s faster, cleaner, and has largely replaced the old stone method for anything produced in volume, like your average book or magazine, especially those with color.

It’s important to distinguish lithography from other methods. Unlike intaglio printing where ink sits in carved-out areas, or woodblock printing and letterpress printing where ink is applied to raised surfaces, lithography relies on a flat plane. No digging, no raising. Just chemistry.

The Principle of Lithography

At its heart, lithography is about exploiting chemical repulsion. The image you want to print is created with a substance that hates water—it's "hydrophobic". The rest of the surface, the non-image area, is treated to attract water—hydrophilic. So, when you introduce water and ink (which is oil-based), the water cleans the non-image areas, and the ink sticks only to the image. This flat plate allows for longer runs and more detail than those older, physical methods.

Senefelder, bless his inventive soul, came up with this in Bavaria in 1796. He used a smooth limestone, hence the name. Draw with oil, wash with gum arabic and water. The gum arabic sticks to the non-greasy parts, repelling water. The oil repels water but accepts ink. Simple. Brutal, even.

Lithography on Limestone

Imagine a lithograph stone. And a map of Munich, printed as a mirror image. That's lithography in action.

It all boils down to oil and water being natural enemies. The image is drawn with something fatty, like a wax crayon. The more lipid-rich, the better it sticks and survives. After the drawing, a solution of gum arabic and nitric acid is applied. This solution creates a hydrophilic layer on the stone, essentially coating the non-image areas. It seeps into the stone's pores, ensuring that the ink will never, ever stick there. Then, they remove the excess greasy drawing material with lithographic, but a thin, molecular film of that grease remains, clinging stubbornly to the surface. It's hydrophobic, naturally, and ready to embrace the ink.

During printing, the stone is kept wet. The water adheres to the gum-arabic layer. Then, printing ink, typically made with drying oils like linseed oil and varnish, is rolled over it. The water pushes the ink away from the non-image areas. The greasy image, however, soaks it up. Finally, the stone and a sheet of paper are run through a press, transferring the ink. It’s a delicate dance of attraction and repulsion.

This early color lithograph from 1835 shows large blocks of orange and cyan, with black ink for the fine details. Senefelder himself tinkered with color printing, even predicting its future in his 1819 book. But it was Godefroy Engelmann in 1837 who really pushed chromolithography. Each color needed its own stone, and the print had to pass through the press for each one. The trick was keeping everything aligned, or "in register". It was perfect for bold, flat colors, giving us those iconic posters of the era.

A lithographer, hard at work in 1880. Imagine the patience required. Or the sheer stubbornness.

As one source dryly observes, "Lithography, or printing from soft stone, largely took the place of engraving in the production of English commercial maps after about 1852. It was a quick, cheap process and had been used to print British army maps during the Peninsular War. Most of the commercial maps of the second half of the 19th century were lithographed and unattractive, though accurate enough." Unattractive, but functional. A common theme.

Modern Lithographic Process

This is where things get industrial. High-volume lithography is the workhorse for posters, maps, books, newspapers, packaging—basically, anything mass-produced with text or graphics. Most books, especially those with illustrations, are printed using offset lithography.

For offset, they use flexible plates made of aluminum, polyester, mylar, or even paper, rather than heavy stones. These plates are coated with a photosensitive emulsion. A photographic negative is placed on top, and the plate is exposed to ultraviolet light. After developing, the emulsion forms a duplicate of the original image. Or, nowadays, a computer-to-plate device can expose the plate directly with a laser. The image areas are the emulsion that remains. Non-image areas used to be chemically removed, but some modern plates skip that step.

Here's a lithography press for printing maps in Munich. And another one, in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. They look quite imposing, don't they?

The plate is wrapped around a cylinder. Dampening rollers apply water to the non-image areas, and then ink rollers apply the oil-based ink, which sticks only to the image.

Now, if they transferred this directly to paper, you'd get a mirror image, and the paper would get soaked. So, the plate cylinder rolls against a rubber blanket cylinder. This blanket picks up the ink, and then transfers it to the paper, which passes between the blanket cylinder and an impression cylinder. It’s an indirect transfer, hence "offset." This method keeps the paper dry and allows for high-speed, automated operation.

There have been countless improvements. Presses with multiple units can print in color on both sides of the paper in a single pass. Web presses handle continuous rolls of paper. The continuous dampening system, a vast improvement over the old cloth-covered rollers, offers better control of water and ink balance. Modern systems even have a "delta effect" to clean impurities.

An archive of lithographic stones in Munich. Relics of a bygone era, perhaps.

The "ink pyramid" refers to the complex series of rollers that transfer ink. Fast web presses are common for newspapers.

Desktop publishing changed everything, allowing for easy manipulation of text and images on computers. Imagesetters produced film negatives from digital files. Then came the platesetter, which exposed the printing plates directly from digital input, eliminating film altogether. Computer-to-plate printing. Efficiency, I suppose.

Lithography as an Artistic Medium

Even in its early days, lithography had a limited impact on printmaking due to technical hurdles. Germany was the primary hub. Godefroy Engelmann in Paris eventually ironed out many of the kinks. Artists like Delacroix and Géricault started using it in the 1820s. Before that, there were experimental works like Specimens of Polyautography in 1803, featuring artists like Benjamin West and Henry Fuseli. London also became a center, and even Goya produced his final prints, The Bulls of Bordeaux, using lithography.

By the mid-19th century, the initial excitement waned a bit, though it gained traction commercially, producing prints for newspapers, like those by Daumier. Artists like Rodolphe Bresdin and Jean-François Millet continued the tradition. A publisher named Cadart tried a portfolio of lithographs in 1862, which included some by Manet, but it wasn't a huge success.

The real revival came in the 1870s, particularly in France. Artists like Odilon Redon, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Degas embraced the medium. The importance of strictly limited editions to maintain value was recognized, and lithography became more accepted as fine art.

A lithographic image of Bothwell Castle near Glasgow, from 1833.

In the 1890s, color lithography really took off, thanks in part to Jules Chéret, the "father of the modern poster." His work influenced a new generation, including Toulouse-Lautrec and Georges de Feure. By 1900, lithography, in both color and monotone, was a staple of printmaking.

The 20th century saw artists like Braque, Calder, Chagall, Dufy, Léger, Matisse, Miró, and Picasso rediscover lithography, largely thanks to the Mourlot Studios, or Atelier Mourlot, in Paris. Founded in 1852, it started with wallpaper but was transformed when Fernand Mourlot invited contemporary artists to experiment. He encouraged them to draw directly on the stones, creating original works that master printers executed in small editions. This collaboration resulted in lithographs often used as posters to promote the artists' exhibitions.

Grant Wood, George Bellows, Alphonse Mucha, Max Kahn, Pablo Picasso, Eleanor Coen, Jasper Johns, David Hockney, Susan Dorothea White, and Robert Rauschenberg are just a few who produced significant work in this medium. M. C. Escher is considered a master. Unlike other techniques, printmakers in lithography still rely heavily on skilled printers and the availability of good print shops. The development of the medium is tied to where and when these printers set up shop. Robert Blackburn founded an American scene for lithography in New York City.

A special variant is the "serilith" or "seriolithograph," a mixed-media print combining lithography and serigraphy (screen printing). Artists draw separations for each process, ensuring a high level of craftsmanship. These are usually limited editions.

See also

You want more? Fine.