Why invest in antique lithographs?
Although today the word lithograph is used- perhaps incorrectly- for a number of contemporary applications, historically a lithograph was a highly prized and collectable piece of art created by means of a hands-on process that required a great many steps: 1. A full color “maquette”, or mock up, of an artwork is created. 2. The image is hand-drawn backwards in grease crayon, one color at a time, each on a separate limestone surface. 3. Each stone is washed with acid; the grease resists the acid, and leaves an impressible area. 4. The stones are pressed to paper in succession, making a multicolored image. This labor-intensive but rewarding process was effectively replaced by the mechanical process of offset printing in the 1930s. A true antique lithograph is instantly recognizable by its use of rich, dense lead inks creating continuous areas of color, unlike contemporary offset printing, which uses a series of colored dots to make up an image. With every year, public awareness of the qua
