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METAL PLATE LITHOGRAPHY
FOR ARTISTS AND DRAFTSMEN

By C. A. Seward 

A BRIEF and concise but adequate manual of technique for the process of drawing on and printing from zinc and aluminum plates to produce  lithographs. Illustrated with thumb-nail sketches showing each step in the process and with twenty full page reproductions of prints by Rockwell Kent, Ernest Born, Birger Sandzen, Mildred Rackley, John Richard Rowe, Wanda Gág, Kenneth M. Adams, George Biddle, William Dickerson, Louis Lozowick, Lloyd C. Foltz, Gerald Cassidy, and the author himself. 

Text covers graining and preparation of plates to receive the drawing, making the drawing with crayon or wash, finishing the plate, gumming up, selecting and preparing the paper for printing, preparing the plate and etching it, printing by several methods, protecting the plate after printing, storing plates, the transfer method, and miscellaneous points concerning manipulation. Formulas for the various solutions required are given and a complete list of required materials. There is also appended a list of supply houses and professional printers from whom requisites may be obtained. 

The use of the lithographic process as a means of securing multiple copies of original drawings, whether for pictorial prints or for  architectural renderings, is not new. Artists and draftsmen  have been making lithographs for years and have found that the medium possesses many advantages. Strangely enough, however, most of the available literature on the subject has been addressed to the professional lithographic printer. A recent book has provided admirable data for artists concerning stone lithography but the volume here described is the first to present the allied subject of metal plate lithography from the standpoint of the artist using this medium. 

The process is becoming better known and more widely used for making fine prints and architectural presentation drawings. Each print, properly made, is an exact duplicate of the original drawing, whether that drawing was made on stone, metal, or transfer paper. The possibility of duplicating drawings this way, readily and inexpensively, makes the process of particular value to the architect. 

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