Chromolithography is a way of making color prints from stone, and later from metal plates. It grew out of lithography, which Alois Senefelder invented in Bavaria in 1796, and by the late 1800s it was the main method of color printing.
How it works
Lithography works because grease and water do not mix. An artist draws on a smooth limestone with a greasy crayon or ink, and the stone is then wetted. Ink rolled over the surface sticks only to the drawing. In a color print, each color needs its own stone, and the paper goes through the press once for every color. Marks on each stone keep the colors lined up. Advertising prints often used 8 to 15 colors, and preparing 1 image could take skilled workers months.
Where the name comes from
The name joins the Greek words chroma (color), lithos (stone), and graphein (to write). Godefroy Engelmann of Mulhouse, France, patented his color process in 1837 and called it chromolithographie. Printers had made color lithographs before that, but his word stuck. The method declined in the early 1900s as cheaper photographic printing took over.
Chromolithography in our collection
2 of the books behind our replicas used this method. The plates in Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen are chromolithographs, including the Lemon in our botanical art collection. Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen der Natur includes color lithographs that Adolf Giltsch drew on the stone in color, such as the Asteridea in our natural history art collection.
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