What is lithography?

Lithography is a method of printing from a substantially flat surface. This distinguishes it from relief printing, where the printing areas are raised, and intaglio printing, where ink is held in recessed lines or areas.

In traditional stone lithography, an artist draws on a prepared, fine-grained limestone surface with a greasy lithographic crayon or ink. The stone is then chemically processed so that, during printing, the image areas accept oily printing ink while the damp non-image areas resist it.

Alois Senefelder

Johann Alois Senefelder was a German-speaking playwright, actor and inventor born in Prague in 1771. While seeking a more economical way of reproducing his writings, he experimented with printing processes in Munich.

Around 1796, his experiments with polished limestone and greasy drawing materials led to the development of the printing method that became known as lithography. Senefelder continued to improve both the chemical process and the equipment required for printing.

In 1818 he published a detailed account of his method in Vollständiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey, a major early manual on lithographic printing.

Why was lithography important?

One of lithography’s important artistic advantages was that an artist could work directly on a flat printing surface using drawing materials rather than having to translate every mark into carved or engraved lines.

The process was therefore particularly suitable for reproducing drawn marks, handwriting and other freely made forms. During the nineteenth century lithography became important in fine-art printmaking as well as in commercial and informational printing.

It was used for such materials as illustrations, maps, musical notation, posters and other printed images.

Color lithography

Lithography can also produce multicolored images. Historically, color lithography required separate printing surfaces for different colors. The sheet was printed repeatedly, with the different color impressions carefully aligned.

This alignment is known as registration. Accurate registration is essential because a shift between successive impressions can cause the colors and outlines to appear incorrectly positioned.

Chromolithography became an important method of color printing during the nineteenth century and was widely used for illustrations, advertisements, decorative prints and other colorful printed material.

Modern offset printing belongs to the lithographic printing tradition, but it does not normally involve an artist drawing on a massive limestone block.

In offset lithography, an inked image is transferred from a printing plate to a rubber-covered blanket cylinder and then from the blanket to the printing surface.

The word lithography is also used in modern microfabrication. Semiconductor photolithography uses light and photosensitive materials to transfer extremely small patterns onto semiconductor wafers.

This should not be confused with traditional stone lithography. The physical and chemical processes are very different, although both involve creating controlled patterns on a surface.

What is lithography?

Lithography is a method of printing from a substantially flat surface. This distinguishes it from relief printing, where the printing areas are raised, and intaglio printing, where ink is held in recessed lines or areas.

In traditional stone lithography, an artist draws on a prepared, fine-grained limestone surface with a greasy lithographic crayon or ink. The stone is then chemically processed so that, during printing, the image areas accept oily printing ink while the damp non-image areas resist it.

Alois Senefelder

Johann Alois Senefelder was a German-speaking playwright, actor and inventor born in Prague in 1771. While seeking a more economical way of reproducing his writings, he experimented with printing processes in Munich.

Around 1796, his experiments with polished limestone and greasy drawing materials led to the development of the printing method that became known as lithography. Senefelder continued to improve both the chemical process and the equipment required for printing.

In 1818 he published a detailed account of his method in Vollständiges Lehrbuch der Steindruckerey, a major early manual on lithographic printing.

Why was lithography important?

One of lithography’s important artistic advantages was that an artist could work directly on a flat printing surface using drawing materials rather than having to translate every mark into carved or engraved lines.

The process was therefore particularly suitable for reproducing drawn marks, handwriting and other freely made forms. During the nineteenth century lithography became important in fine-art printmaking as well as in commercial and informational printing.

It was used for such materials as illustrations, maps, musical notation, posters and other printed images.

Color lithography

Lithography can also produce multicolored images. Historically, color lithography required separate printing surfaces for different colors. The sheet was printed repeatedly, with the different color impressions carefully aligned.

This alignment is known as registration. Accurate registration is essential because a shift between successive impressions can cause the colors and outlines to appear incorrectly positioned.

Chromolithography became an important method of color printing during the nineteenth century and was widely used for illustrations, advertisements, decorative prints and other colorful printed material.

Modern offset printing belongs to the lithographic printing tradition, but it does not normally involve an artist drawing on a massive limestone block.

In offset lithography, an inked image is transferred from a printing plate to a rubber-covered blanket cylinder and then from the blanket to the printing surface.

The word lithography is also used in modern microfabrication. Semiconductor photolithography uses light and photosensitive materials to transfer extremely small patterns onto semiconductor wafers.

This should not be confused with traditional stone lithography. The physical and chemical processes are very different, although both involve creating controlled patterns on a surface.