Auction Features Antique Books, Maps, Historical Documents, Important Prints & More
The printing process which creates a lithograph is different from other traditional methods. Most printing presses require the printmaker to etch an image or text into metal plates or physically carve out the image on blocks of wood or other soft material. To create a lithograph, however, no etching is required. The artist uses a set of greasy crayons or pencils to draw a mirrored image of the original artwork onto a smooth stone tablet. This is by far the most time-consuming part of the lithograph process.
Photogravure is an intaglio printmaking or photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio print that can reproduce the detail and continuous tones of a photograph.
Mapmaking dates to at least the late 15th century, just a few decades after Gutenberg’s introduction of the first moveable type printing press. By the time of Queen Elizabeth’s reign during the second half of the 16th century, people were already collecting these documents, which were usually bound in books, making them important additions to any self-respecting library. The large bulk of highly collectible maps will have been printed between about 1472 and 1860. This period opens with the first known use of printing to reproduce a map (Isidore's TO map of the World of 1472), continues through the age of atlases as luxury goods for rich connoisseurs, and ends when leaps in printing technology allowed maps to be mass produced.
