Evening star., 1912-09-11
MODERN ILLUSTRATION.
VLrTHOGRAPFIY AND COLOR WORK
By Frederic J. Haskin.


! While many persons prefer fine engraV-
! ings and etchings to any form OIL coior
/ Illustration. color is an attraction TO tue
| great majority and 1t has the advantage
| Of being more natural in its appearance.
| Until the modern three-color processes
which now are in an advanced stage VI
development. the most practical form OIL
| color reproduction has been that OF
| lithography. which has been in actual use
about century. The lithographing proc
ess. which has developed into an i'm
| pOrtant branch of the publishing INDUS
| try. owes it's origin to the discoveries OF
| slois Senefelder a Bavarian. who con-
ceived the possibilities of utilizing stone
| plates as a means OF printing il!ustra-
tions The earlier experiments of Sene-
fielder were in making plates for printing
music which he could not afford to have
published. His father had been an actor
who had placed his son in college to edu.
| cate him as a lawyer. The father died
and the son was unable to continue his
studies.
| The young man, thrown upon his own
resources developed a great taste Tor
| music. He composed several pieces and
| unsuccessfully tried to have them puD-
| lished. The necessity for economy leo
| him to etch these upon sheets OF metal
and print them himself upon a cheap
handpress, which his mother purchased
for him out Of her scant savings. Whlle
engaged at this work he bought piece
of stone from a nearby quarry intending
| to use it as a slab upon which to mix
| his ink. 1t happened to be of a smooth.
compact nature and the idea of using it as
a plate instead of metal occurred to him.
| At first this was unsuccessful and he
| was reduced to great financial straits,
| finally joining the army as that would
afford him livelihood. and. at the same
| time, give him more leisure in which to
| continue his experiments than he could
secure in any other vocation.
One day his mother came in and asked
him to write out list of clothes for the
washwoman. Hav-
Process Discovered ing no pen and
by Accident. sspefelder % iotted
down the items upon a clean, smooth
stone he had prepared, using for the pur-
| pose an ink prepared Of soap, wax ano
Liampblack. Afterward, when about TO
rub the writing from the stone, it occur
red to him that he might etch 1t in relief
| and IL successful this method might prove
an easy way Of securing the printing OF
his music He put border or wax
around the edge of the stone and poured
| q quantity of acid over the work. In
| short time the acid had dissolved the
surface of the stone sufficiently to leave
| his writing quite in relief. Thls was not
| lithograp ply. but it was the first process
| which led up to it.
In the experiments which followed. and
| his autobiography tells us that he made
L hat
caIcareous stone Qimestone) had a chemi-
| cal affinity for grease and also, being OF
| a porous nature, it retained moisture for
| some time. In other words, daub Of
grease upon clean. polished stone would
| receive printing ink and refuse water,
| while the other part of the stone would
retain moisture and refuse to take on Ink
the natural principle of the mutual re-
| puision of grease and water coming into
!! play. This made it possible for roller
| charged with a somewhat greasy ink to
| be rolled over stones surface which had
previously been dampened without part
/ ing with any of it's ink except to those
places which had previously been pre-
pared to receive it by the application of
| grease.
When this point was reached Senefelder
| patented his discoveries in Germany.
/ Austria and Eng
Senefelder Patents land. between the
His Discoveries. 1ss'S ,sos before aeu 1ns his
death, in 1884, he had the pleasure Of see
| ing his wonderful discovery established
as an important industry in all the prin-
| cipal towns of Europe. The added i'm
provements in the printing presses doing
this work have made possible the pro-
/ duction Of beautiful pitcures in quantities
| ~s@l, l.
painstaking inventor if he could visit a
| large lithographing esta blishment of the
present decade.
| Chromolithography developed rather
! slowly, one of its first uses in England
being the production of playing cards by
| printing them in oils instead of stencil
| ing. as had been done previously. This
was done by a London firm in 1882. The
first important work illustrated in this
| manner in England was a volume known
| as The Arabian Antiquities of Spain,
| written by owen Jones. who was so i'm
pressed with the beauty of the old Moor
| ish palace at Granada and other ruins
| of the same period that he desired to
prepare an illustrated description of them
| for the benefit Of posterity. He set to work
with pencil and brush. and copied some
| of the finest details which he took to
England to have printed. Finding diff
| Guilty in securing any one capable of re-
producing his pictures, he set up a litho-
| graphing establishment of his own and
proceeded with the Illustration of his
book by photographic processes using six
or seven tints. including gold. which had
not been used before in any mechanical
means Of illustration. This book was
| published in 1886. and, although it was
not the success its author hoped for, it
had an important bearing upon the prog
ress of artistic color printing.
| While the effects of the lithographing
processes Of color reproduction are in
| many cases most
Labor and Expense beautiful, they have
:: until comparative
| ~ SoA0A Ss' ly recently been at
tended with much labor and expense. A
different stone plate had to be made for
each color used and as many as twenty
| or thirty stones have been used in the
production Of a single picture. For this
reason modern photographers are greatly
changing the carly processes. The mod
ern printing press also is not as we'll
| he m