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ALOYS SENEFELDER - STONE LITHOGRAPHY

The Stone Lithography Story

Stone Lithography was invented by Aloys Senefelder (1771-1834) in 1798. 
After much experimentation, Senefelder found that he achieved the 
best results using a greasy crayon on Bavarian limestone. The stone 
used in lithographic printing is a very fine-grained, compact limestone, 
the finest found only in the Jura Mountains of Bavaria. Senefelder called 
his new process chemical printing or stone lithography.

His was the first flat surface or plano-graphic printing process. Stone 
lithography depends on the mutual repulsion of grease and water. 
A design is drawn on the limestone with greasy inks or crayons and then 
the whole surface is dampened. The surface helps to hold the water 
while the ink repels it. Then the surface is rolled with printing ink that 
sticks to the greasy drawing, but not to the wet surface of the 
untouched stone. Lithography differs from other printing processes 
in that the impression is taken from a completely flat surface.

Creating the image was a time-consuming, arduous task requiring 
many skilled craftsmen. First, a line drawing (basically an outline 
lacking detail) is drawn. This image is transferred onto the stone. 
The artwork on the stone must appear in mirror image of the actual 
drawing. The artist then would add the needed detail. A print requiring 
multiple colors would need trace registration marks which allowed 
each subsequent drawing (each color required a separate drawing 
on the stone) to be perfectly aligned with the previous 
drawing and printing.

It was initially used as a commercial printing process, especially 
for the duplication of scripts and illustrations in books. Artists realized 
that this medium was also an excellent way to create multiple images. 
Artists Delacroix and Goya, among others, mastered the technique. 
Later painters such as Picasso, Miro and Chagall embraced lithography 
to create fine art. Today, hand-printed lithographs are created by 
artists in many parts of the world and are held in high regard 
as original works of art.

Color printing on stone is called Chromolithography. In the 19^th century 
Chromolithography became the chief means of inexpensively reproducing 
works of art in color and illustrating books and magazines. Though laborious, 
stone lithography, when set up could produce thousands of elegant 
images without image degradation. This new technique soon became 
more popular than steel or copper engravings, which lost image 
sharpness after only 30-50 prints were pulled. The first private American 
concern to sell stone produced prints was founded by Nathaniel Currier
 (1813-1888). He and partner James Ives (1824-1895),  became 
print makers to the American people, and were better known 
as Currier & Ives.

Stone lithography in American reached it’s zenith with the work 
of Louis Prang who came to Boston from Germany. Prang made 
lithographs that used as many as 44 separate stones. He also was the first 
to add embossing and imitation brush strokes. He pioneered a lacquering 
process for utmost realism and dimension. Prang’s chromolithographs 
were made up of intermingled solid blocks of colors placed side by 
side in small color areas, creating a complete range of hues and tints 
capable of reproducing the entire color spectrum. This technique is 
called crayon chromo-lithography. Most labels produced in the 
1870s used this technique. 

Later stone lithography became even more sophisticated with the 
use of hand stippling. Stippling is the process of applying a series of
 
intermingled dots to the image on the stone to produce variant 
degrees of shading. Each image would have thousands of hand 
applied stipple dots when it was finished. This concept when 
used with color, produced a highly accurate rendition of the 
artist’s original image.

                                                
            1. The process began with an artist's drawing           2.   Heavy Bavarian limestone was  
                                                                                                                  cut into smaller slabs



                                                  
               3. Skilled engravers transferred the                    4.The stones were then carefully inked-
                            images onto the stones                                      a different stone for each color 

        


                                                  
             5. Then they were ready to print on the                 6. The finished product was then cut 
                          on the lithographic press                                                         and bundled

COMPARISON OF PHOTO-MECHANICAL AND STONE-LITHO LABEL