Sisy Wong
Lithography printing is a planographic printing process that makes use of the immiscibility of grease and water. The printing process is using the ink to a grease-treated image on the flat printing surface. The ink will then directly print on the paper by a unique press or a rubber cylinder. The lithography printing was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder. He used a porous Bavarian as his plate. This technique was well-known when Senefelder published Vollständiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey.
There are two ways of lithography printing, one is fine art lithography and the second one is commercial lithography.
For fine art lithography, the earliest but not the only method of making lithographs are using the porous limestone. The art lithography method has changed in the Senefelder’s time. The image is created with tusche and litho crayon before the painting surface is fixed, moistened, and inked. Honoré Daumier is the first lithographers who use tusche instead of lithographic stone. The color lithography is called chromolithographs which were developed during the second half of the 19th century. In the twentieth century, people like Max Beckmann, Ernst Kirchner, Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso made great impact and power on the media.
For the commercial lithography, it was used to show popular topical, historical, and religious subjects to a wide audience. Some of the well-known commercial lithography publisher was Currier & Ives of New York City. The lithographs were printed in black ink and were hand-colored by an assembly line of women. They were often shown in watercolor form. The early color lithographs were done in colored inks. The steam-driven lithographic press was created by Hughes & Kimber of England in 1865 and was introduced to United States in 1866. In 1853 the offset lithography was first patented by John Strather of England.
