Lithography

Twyman 2001

• Covers the basics of lithography's development and spread
• Discusses genres where lithography was successful and why
• Final discussion of how lithography defies traditional bibliography and could be understood as presaging designing documents with computers

There is pressure on printing / the process of reproduction from rise of science / scientific communication (diagrams), colonialism (maps, printing in other languages), need to visualize things better. Lithography helps address some of these concerns by easing up printing of tables

British context

Henry Shaw, Illuminated Ornaments Selected from the Manuscripts of the Middle Age (1833)

• https://www.google.com/books/edition/Illuminated_Ornaments/sgKKrgEACAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
• https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t02z3tf7b&view=thumb&seq=1
• Chiswick Press
• Engraved – not lithography
• Correcting some of the images, removing signs of decay from manuscript – in line with his belief that facsimiles offered advantages over the original (Hindman 229)
• Attracted to the collage aesthetic (Hindman 229-30)

Henry Noel Humphreys, Illuminated Illustrations of Froissart, Selected from the MS. in the British Museum . . . Selected from the MS. in the Bibliothe`que royale, Paris, and from other sources, 2 vols. (London: William Smith, 1844–1845), I.iii.

Henry Noel Humphreys, The Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages: An account of the development and progress of the art of illumination . . . Illustrated by a series of examples, of the size of the originals, selected from the most beautiful mss. of the various periods, executed on stone and printed in colours by Owen Jones (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1849).

Digby Wyatt and William Robert Tymms, The Art of Illuminating as Practiced in Europe from the Earliest Times (1860)

John Obadiah Westwood, Facsimiles of the Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts (1868)

• https://archive.org/details/facsimilesofmini00west/page/n185/mode/thumb?ref=ol&view=theater
• Corrected galley proofs: https://primo.getty.edu/permalink/f/19q6gmb/GETTY_ALMA21131046060001551

French context

Godefroy Engelmann, brought lithography to Paris and invented and patented a process for making chromolithographs; see Leon Lang, Godefroy Engelmann, imprimeur lithographe les incunables, 1814-1817 (1977)

Twyman points out that Engelmann in his patent of his color printing process seems to have imagined it as a means of picture printing; "Not only was Engelmann’s process targeted at picture printers, but it was based on the idea of printing them in just three or four colours. He had already produced other kinds of lithography in colour, including some large text-based posters in the 1820s and at least one book cover, which he printed in three colours in 1835 (fig. 2). Clearly he did not regard this kind of work as ‘chromolithographie’. Nevertheless, the significance of his patent lay not so much in the idea of picture printing, but in the particular approach he took to it. This had to be the case if he wanted to be able to claim his process as an ‘invention’, since other lithographers had printed pictures in colour before him. So we are left with this confusion over what chromolithography actually means. Some French writers on colour lithography have tried to make a distinction between picture printing in colour and other colour work, such as jobbing printing and the book cover illustrated here. They limit their use of ‘chromolithographie’ to pictorial work (regardless of whether the method used was Engelmann’s) and apply the word ‘lithocolore’ – a term that pre-dates Engelmann’s process and was originally used by him to describe it – to non-pictorial work." https://www.georgebaxter.com/baxter-the-chromolithographic-conte

Engelmann’s Album Chromolithographique ou Recueil d'Essays du Nouveau Procédé d'impression lithographique en couleurs (1838)

• Examples of processes he had patented the year before
• Twyman describes it as the “conceptual breakthrough” needed to launch chromolithography (103)

Engelmann and Graf, Statuts de l'Ordre du Saint-Esprit, 1853 [1854]

• Early French facsimile of single leaves of medieval manuscript, as mentioned in Randall n 6
  • “The illuminated model for the printed version, copied on parchment by Albert Racinet from MS fro 4274 in the Bibliotheque Nationale, is in the Walters Art Gallery (350 x 275 mm).”
  • https://archive.org/details/gri_33125008252294/page/n55/mode/2up

Gruel and Engelmann, Nouvelles Heures et Prières Composées dans le style des Manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle (ca 1880)

Gruel and Engelmann, Manuel historique et bibliographique de l'amateur de reliures (1887)

• https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/101750869
• illustrations of binding in chromolithograph

Gruel and Engelmann, Les reliures remarquables du Musée Britannique (1889)

• Chromolithographs of bindings
• https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100204994

Curmer, L'imitation de Jésus-Christ (1855-7) – “landmark” according to Twyman

• “has long been recognized as a landmark French book, and its 400 pages of border decorations continue to delight the eye through the variety of their design and their vivid use of colour. In his introductory text Curmer explained his sources and outlined his production methods. A team of artists under his personal direction made drawings from original manuscripts in several libraries (what is now the Bibliothèque nationale, the libraries of the Arsenal and Sainte-Geneviève, as well as other libraries in France and overseas.). The text of the book, taken from a variety of religious sources and translated by Michel de Marillac, runs through most of the book within its border designs, each of the four texts being preceded by a full-page illustration.”
• https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t60627p1m&view=thumb&seq=1

Curmeer, Œuvre de Jehan Foucquet (1866-7)

• https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000379203
• Randall points out it has the same dedication style as woven book of hours

Peintures et ornements des manuscrits classés dans un ordre chronologique, pour servir à l'histoire des arts du dessin depuis le IVe siècle de l'ère chrétienne jusqu'à la fin du XVIe siècle (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1835-69)

• https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8562484n/f2.item
• “Similar research stimulated as well the development of the interpretation of images, or, iconographic science, among archeologists, such as Adolphe Napoléon Didron and the clergymen Charles Cahier, Arthur Martin, and Augustin Joseph Crosnier. Their studies shed light on several manuscripts of the Early Middle Ages. After the subsequent development of the historicist approach in the field of architecture, all publications, among them manuscripts from the Early Medieval and Romanesque periods, were used by archaeologists and architects for the restoration of historical monuments or the construction of new monuments in neo-Romanesque style. For example, plates in Peintures et Ornements des manuscrits by Bastard d’Estang were used to restore several buildings in the North and South of France.” (Denoel 8)

“its luxurious hand-painted lithographic plates were displayed twice at the Universal Exhibitions of 1851 in London and in 1878 in Paris, in order to continue where Winckelmann had led off” (19)

Notice of Leon Gruel’s skill in bookbinding reaching Anglophone world: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Bookworm/6a09AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=imitation+gruel+jesus+christ&pg=PA376&printsec=frontcover

Gruel specializes in reproducing old styles of binding: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Bookmart/wVADAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=imitation+gruel+jesus+christ&pg=PA411&printsec=frontcover

Engelmann proofs at Princeton: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/07/21/archive-of-proofs-and-samples-from-the-societe-engelmann-pere-et-fils-ca-1839/

Handwritten books

Lithography used for handwritten books hard to set in letterpress type; examples:

• Ryde’s hydraulic tables (1851) -- design based on medieval canon tables
• A key to some of thee dialogues of Lucian (1829) – Twyman suggests both share something with medieval design

Rise of data viz – e.g. Minard’s maps of Napoleon; schematics; see last chapter of Twyman 2001 and Thomson, “19c colour printing”