Lithography

INTRODUCTION

Lithography is a planographic process, which means that a print is taken from a completely flat surface, unlike relief and intaglio printing which are raised or incised. In its simplest form lithography works due to the fact that water and grease do not mix. The artist draws on a stone or plate (the matrix) with a greasy drawing material and prints with greasy ink. Providing the matrix is kept damp throughout printing the water will be repelled by the greasy drawing material and hold on to the negative space. The greasy ink will only be attracted to the greasy drawing material and will not adhere to the parts of the matrix that contain water.

A BRIEF HISTORY

Lithography was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder in Bavaria, Germany. Senefelder was looking for a way to publish his music scores which, prior to the invention of lithography, would have been engraved into copper plates. Senefelder had purchased a block of Bavarian limestone to test for an engraving, which at that time would have been cheaper than buying copper plates.

Apparently Senefelder discovered lithography when he wrote down his mother's laundry list on a block of limestone. He just so happened to be using an ink made up of pigment, soap and wax. He then tested this drawing material to see if it would work as an acid resist and later discovered that if the stone was kept damp, then the image could be inked up and the non-image areas would reject the ink. He referred to this as chemical printing and lithography, stone writing being just one aspect of this process. Now the term is used in reference to all aspects of chemical printing, both stone and plate. Lithography was used commercially to print labels, posters, packaging, newspapers, etc. Plate lithography was developed as early as 1840, as a cheaper and lighter alternative to stone. This was especially advantageous in commercial printing, as work could be produced at a faster pace. The lithographic print community has always benefited from developments in the commercial sector and when advances were made in photomechanical printing, fine art lithographers adapted this to suit their own needs.

Even though the principle of lithography is simple, it is in fact a rather complex process and a lithographic printer can train for years to master all of its complexities. For this very reason lithography has a strong tradition of collaboration, where the printer will deal with all of the technical aspects of the process and the artist will only worry about their concept and the artistic side of creation.

Previously, collaborations were between artists and commercial printers or at least with printers who started out in the commercial industry, with collaborations in the UK being recorded as early as 1803. When commercial printing developed further and became irrelevant to fine art printing, print studios were set up purely for collaborative purposes. The UK's most renowned lithographic studio was The Curwen Studio, established in 1958 and managed by master printer Stanley Jones MBE. Prior to leading the new Curwen Studio, Jones had trained in lithography at the École des Beaux-Arts before working at Atelier Patris in Paris, at the time the centre of the art and print publishing world. Curwen, originally known as the Curwen Press, had been established in 1863 by Reverend John Curwen for the printing of music scores; the studio started collaborating with artists when Harold Curwen took over in 1908.

Stanley Jones worked at The Curwen Studio until 2014 and during that time he collaborated with artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland, David Gentleman, Paula Rego and Eric Ravilious, to name a few. He also established the Curwen Print Study Centre in 2000, which is an educational hub offering adult learning classes and an educational programme for schools. The Curwen Studio still operates and collaborates with artists today, under the umbrella of Worton Hall Studios in London.

Over the years a number of print studios opened up and collaborated with artists; however, in the early years, printers were often very secretive about the technical aspects of lithography, especially the etching process. As commercial lithography training changed radically, moving away from using stones and plates, this left a void in traditional skill sets being passed down from master to apprentice. In 1960 in the USA, artist June Wayne established the Tamarind Institute with the help of the Ford Foundation. Its aim was to train and establish a pool of master printers who would then set up their own studios throughout the USA, continue to collaborate with artists, and establish a print market, promoting both lithography and collaboration. Over the years the Tamarind Institute and its printers have contributed to research regarding presses, papers and techniques such as transfers and negative mark-making. It is now regarded as a world-renowned institution and as a result, the USA has some of the best collaborative print studios and educational programmes, attracting printers from around the world who are keen to enrich their country's lithographic and collaborative tradition.

THE POTENTIAL OF LITHOGRAPHY AND OUR EXPERIENCE AS COLLABORATIVE PRINTERS

Lithography is the most versatile of all printmaking processes as it can also mimic all the other printmaking processes. Lithography still seems to be perceived as a process for black-and-white, beautifully rendered drawings and hopefully this book will show its full potential.

Chris Orr, The Bits John Constable Left Out, from The Miserable Lives of Fabulous Artists. An eight-colour lithograph, 103 x 73cm. Edition of 50. Collaborating printer: Stephanie Turnbull at the Curwen Studio. Each colour separation was drawn on a separate piece of true grain and exposed to photoplates. This lithograph was the first image to be printed where the printing bed of the offset press was maxed out in both directions.

As collaborative printers, we have worked with a variety of artists and had the opportunity to work on some interesting projects. Without these collaborative experiences, the range of work we are able to do would be smaller. Our experiences in collaboration serve to enrich and broaden our own technical skills and thinking, as well as enabling us to use the lithographic process in our own art practices and future collaborative projects.

Artists have always worked across different media and the notion of artists making collaborative prints became common practice in Paris during the early twentieth century. The gallerist and print publisher Ambroise Vollard was a fervent supporter of the Parisian studios and commissioned countless artists to work in collaboration with the printers.

One notable artist-printer relationship was that of Pablo Picasso with Fernand Mourlot at Mourlot Studio, making around 400 lithographs there. Picasso would re-work a stone or plate several times. The lithographs telling the story of David and Bathsheba are testament to the skills of the printers there. The single stone used for David and Bathsheba was edited some thirteen times, the first state drawn with crayon and ink on a light background and transformed to state thirteen with light scratches on a dark background. At each state an edition was pulled, and each state considered an element of the final work. These prints along with the stone, inked in its final state, are housed in the collection at the Musée National Picasso-Paris.

Clare Woods, Shirley, 2013, 166 x 227cm, two-colour aluminium plate lithograph 1/1. Collaborating printer: Stephanie Turnbull. The image is made up of four ball-grained aluminium plates with two plates printed side by side to create one layer. As there were no presses big enough, a pedestrian walk-behind roller was used instead.

Some of the most technically ambitious collaborations were carried out by master printer Kenneth Tyler between 1965 and 2001 when he retired. Inspired by Picasso who notoriously never followed the rules, Tyler adopted the same principle in his own workshops: no rules and no restrictions. By creating a collaborative space without limitations for the artist, it allowed Tyler and his printers to produce some of the largest, most technically complex prints in history. They broke the technical boundaries of traditional print, leading the way as pioneers and innovators, designing new presses, papers and techniques that we still use today.

Michael Armitage, Ewaso Niro, 2016-17. Lithograph on white Somerset 410gsm tub-sized satin paper hand finished with ink, watercolour, colour pencil and conte. 28 3/4 x 34 13/16 in (73 x 88.5 cm); 31 15/16 x 38 1/16 x 1 3/4 in. (81.2 x 96.6 x 4.5 cm) (framed). © Michael Armitage. Photo © White Cube (George Darrell). Collaborating printer: Catherine Ade. The image is made from two zinc plates. The background plate was printed twice, one colour was printed, the plate edited and then a new colour over-printed to create a new blended colour on the paper. The artist added hand colouring with ink, watercolour, coloured pencil and conté crayon.

Within our own collaborations, scale is often the thing artists want to push the most, by maxing out the press beds - for example, our collaborations with Chris Orr and Michael Armitage at the Curwen Studio, or Stephanie's collaborations with Clare Woods, printing two large ball-grained plates side by side with a ground roller on the floor of Clare's studio.

Some collaborations have made us think outside the box when it comes to implementing different drawing...