Notes on lithography
From a book by Ervin Neumayer and ChristineSchelerger
.. by now railways crisscrossed the subcontinent and the telegraph had dwarfed distances.
European book illustrations, poster advertisements, labels of prepackaged European merchandise adorned for oriental markets, cheap German oleograph or chromolithograph prints.
their ideological and sociological significance as India's first uifying visual medium of communication.
Indian calendar is a phenomenon of the 1930's.
Thaetis the primordial ocean that once surrounded the earth.
The stones. A succession of chemical processes makes these marks fully receptive to grease and fully resistant to water. The unmarked parts of the stone remained receptive to water and unreceptive to grease. put water and grease on stone, grease stays on marks, damp stays on rest.
paper is laid on the stone, with backing material and a thin sheet above it- the whole is passed on runners under a bar of wood covered in leather known as the scraper.
mirror image
earlier- forbiddingly expensive copper plats.
lithography in india- french resident in calcutta. de Savignaac 1822- printed portrait if Warren Hastings another of Ram Mohun Roy.
1826. Asiatic Society press tarted with scrientific ... on natural history and other subjects.
1822, I N Rind,an Englishman returned to calcutta, from London, carrying litho press. 1826- Gvt. Lithographic Press, he became superindent
By this time, lithography well established in India. It not only accelerated the circulation of written words in colloquial languages and scripts, ot also generated a rich harvest of cheap editions of popular religious and mythological texts illustrated with lithograph. still found on pavements- pritned now, but still manuscript form from old times- pages turned upwards.
With the coming of the railway, huge rise in requirement for forms and vouchers. At all railway head offices,large lithographic workshops. Established paper work bureaucratisaion.
Cheap waster paper, cesondar use.
pre industrial organisation of cottage industries with their large force of bonded labour.
letter press parallels wine press- vertical screw spindle- vertical pressure.
rotary pressletter press - rollers putting on ink, impressing one paper, result also of revolution of 1848 in europe.. freedom of speech and press. also led- reduction of labour- steam driven instead. machine made paper would replace paper milled from textile waste.
George sigh from Vienna, principal engineering concer- railway brochures= nw tiype of priting press for litography which lso dispensed with the cumbersome scraper . Germany became known for its printing. the tremendous growth of railways, postal services, banking and the stock market- demanded a steady stream of printed paper Maps, paper money, advertisements, stock holder, certificates, security papers, produced by lithographic techniques.
Senfelder had already proposed blending primary colours of translucent nature- to arrive at colour prints- process- affprdble- only after- high speed printing , machines
for a pitcutre - prepare as many stoens are there are colours and print in succession. contours made on lith stone to create seperation.
oleograph/chromo lithograph/colour lithograph/oil print and the like
Indian lithographers relied heavily on the stippe technique where the image is transferred to the stone in a virtually pointilist fashion
earliest prints- later, largest- 70x50 cms ma??
These technical stipulations made industrial lithography the ideal medium for mass priting. While centrally produced commercial prints, either for packaging, advertisign goods or for display- flooded the narinal market, establishing a pan idnain iconography- they pushed local mythological traditions and the iconography assocaited with them to the periphery. Indded this industrial colonialism of the visual media( brought about by the visual power of the industrial image virtually exterminated the gods and goddesses of many a minor tradition.
half tone prints- small- 39x25 cms pic 20 x 15 cms prits could e produced on the letter press. small treadle presses of the famous Heidelberger system were common in every Indian backyard.
Photographic trasfer process introduced in India soon after 1900 by Dada Saheb Phalke. He set up his own studio in Malvali that worked for the Ravi Varma Press but also for other printers in the area. colour transfer of pictures in conjunction with photography. Assisted by a range of colour filters, individual colours could be photographically seperated from a picture, speeding up the tedious process of seperation by hand. for years, though stencilling had a long tradition, strict disvision of casts and guilds made it difficult for technologies to travel freely between different categories of crafts.
Signed woodlocks show- blockmaker, illustrator not from textile industry,but diverse- brahman, ironsmith..
1894 first high speed steam driven press which could produce 1000 oleographs per shift, installed at Ravi Varma press.
