Category:Chromolithography

CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY. Chromolithography, a method for making multi-color prints, stemmed from the process of lithography, and it included all types of lithography printed in color. When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrom is frequently used. Lithographers sought to find a way to print on flat surfaces with the use of chemicals instead of relief or intaglio printing.

Chromolithography became the most successful of several methods of color printing developed by the 19th century. The initial technique involved the use of multiple lithographic stones, one for each color and was extremely expensive when done for the best quality results. Depending on the number of colors present, a chromolithograph could take months to produce, by very skilled workers. However much cheaper prints could be produced by simplifying both the number of colors used and the refinement of the detail in the image. Cheaper images, like advertisements, relied heavily on an initial black print (not always a lithograph), on which colors were then overprinted. To make an expensive reproduction print as what was once referred to as a “’chromo’”, a lithographer, with a finished painting in front of him, gradually created and corrected the many stones using proofs to look as much as possible like the painting in front of him, sometimes using dozens of layers. (Wikipedia)

Those in Dubuque involved in this business included: