Frank Romano: We are here at the 8th Annual Printing Arts Fair at the Museum of Printing in North Andover, Massachusetts, and we’re going to demonstrate what lithography started out to be. And with us is Carolyn Muskat, better known as the Litho Queen, and she’s going to show you how we print from stone lithography. So let’s start from scratch—what is that?

Carolyn Muskat: This is a stone, it’s limestone from a quarry in Germany, and you polish it very smooth and flat, and then you can create your image on it with a grease or wax-based material. It comes in drawing form or paint form, whatever kind of mark an artist would like to make. You create your image on the stone.

Frank Romano: So anything you can draw or write on the stone you can reproduce?

Carolyn Muskat: Yes, you can actually put on the stone. Litho is based on two things that do not willingly get along; in this case, grease and water. So you put your image on the surface of the stone and then treat the surface with a solution that makes all of your non-image areas water-loving.

Frank Romano: And what is that solution?

Carolyn Muskat: Usually gum arabic and sometimes gum arabic with a little bit of nitric or citric acid in it. And you treat that so that makes your non-image areas water-loving. Then when you’re ready to print…

Frank Romano: So it’s just a sponge you’re using with that solution on it?

Carolyn Muskat: No. This has already been treated. All that’s in my sponge is water.

Frank Romano: Oh okay.

Carolyn Muskat: This has already been treated with the gum arabic which is a liquid. It comes from the acacia tree in the Sudan from crystals that collect basically the sap and then dissolve in water. It’s in a lot of foods as a preservative, okay; it keeps things from getting stale because it attracts moisture. It’s already been treated. This is just water and I just need to keep the surface of the stone damp, and the non-image areas will hang on to that water so when I roll on it with an oil basing the ink is rejected and it only goes right where you create an image.

If I didn’t sponge before I roll, the ink would go everywhere, so it’s really critical that you sponge before you roll—give it another inking and again, I need to responge. You can see, it’s already starting to—the water evaporates, and so you need to just responge before you roll, like every time. Otherwise, you’re going to have ink everywhere; you won’t have all your tones and nuances. And again, it takes several inkings to ink up. It’s like painting a wall. You get a nicer finish if you have a couple of thinner coats than one thick coat because you want to maintain all your nuances—clean it up.

Frank Romano: There’s a lot of work involved in this.

Carolyn Muskat: A little bit.

Frank Romano: Now you’ve preprinted those sheets.

Carolyn Muskat: Yes. These were preprinted from a polyester plate and an aluminum plate, and then the stone is the third layer.

Frank Romano: So we’re printing the black right now.

Carolyn Muskat: Right, we’re printing the black. Those are the two plates that we’ve already used.

Frank Romano: Okay, got it.

Carolyn Muskat: So this is now the final layer.

Frank Romano: And so if you were doing chromolithography, positioning that paper became extremely critical.

Carolyn Muskat: No, it is—now, I have a little bit of typewriter straight to go. You just—this is done with simple marks on the stone and plates, and marks on the back of the paper. It’s called T-bar registration. It’s one of the simplest out there, but it works; all it takes is a little bit of care.

Frank Romano: And so what we now are doing is applying pressure.

Carolyn Muskat: Right.

Frank Romano: It’s going through this device that has a roller.

Carolyn Muskat: No. Well, we’ve got a roller underneath to move the press bed, but this is actually a bar applying pressure, and this is just grease so that that bar slides across and does not bind. You want—you get a different application of pressure by a bar than you would by a roller. So litho presses have bars.

Frank Romano: I can see where you get your muscles.

Carolyn Muskat: I don’t have a lot of guilt eating brownies.

Frank Romano: And viola—lithographic printing. Litho is from the Greek—stone, graphy from the Greek—writing. Thank you very much, Carolyn Muskat.