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No title (lithographic stone with letterhead from Merchants' and Manufacturers' Mutual Insurance Company)
No title (lithographic stone with letterhead from Merchants' and Manufacturers' Mutual Insurance Company)
No title (lithographic stone with letterhead from Merchants' and Manufacturers' Mutual Insurance Company)

No title (lithographic stone with letterhead from Merchants' and Manufacturers' Mutual Insurance Company)

Manufacturer
Daten.d.
Mediumlimestone
Dimensions6 x 8 x 2 1/2 in. (15.2 x 20.3 x 6.4 cm)
ClassificationsPrinting and Print-Making Equipment
Credit LineGift of Bernard Ewell, 2011
Object number2011.13.2
DescriptionA lithographic stone used in the printing of insurance policies with the remains of a letterhead from Merchants' and Manufacturers' Mutual Insurance Company.
Text Entries
A lithographic stone used in the printing of insurance policies with the remains of a letterhead from Merchants' and Manufacturers' Mutual Insurance Company. This work shows the connection between the lithographic processes used for commercial work and lithography as a fine art technology. It also reveals the faux division between art and material culture. The image displays the formal Victorian typography that remained popular well into the twentieth century for stock certificates and other official printing jobs.                 
This small lithographic stone offers an example of the complex ways the high end stock certificates and letterheads were produced at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. In the case of hand lettered material that still remains on the surface of the stone, the lettering was hand drawn in tusche—a waxy liquid used like India ink—with a crow quill pen on transfer paper. When the lettering dried, the stone was processed with acetified gum Arabic. When the gum had dried, the tusche was dissolved with solvents and replaced with thinned printer’s ink that was rubbed into the stone and replaced the fragile tusche. The ink provided a solid base to print large editions detailed drawings and typography. Exceptionally large runs were made with transfer paper that was printed from the original image. The transfer papers could be used to transfer the original image to multiple stones in a process mimicking the original creation of the designing with tusche.
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