Collaboration in Practice: British Lithography 1800-2022

This book, published by Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum and Galleries to accompany the exhibition of the same name on British Lithography 1800-2022, provides an overview, narrative and visual history of Fine Art Lithography in the UK. Including examples of lithographs from the Aberystwyth University Collection of Drawings and Prints, supported by works borrowed from other collections and institutions - both exhibition and book demonstrate how innovation, ingenuity, craft and skill have produced a rich diversity of graphic art through combination of collaboration and entrepreneurship.

Significantly the research includes some of the first examples of lithography ever to have been produced anywhere. Known as Specimens of Polyautography, a series of over 36 images were printed in London in 1801-1806 as result of a collaboration between Royal Academicians and the German printer Philipp Andre. Comprising a broad range of black and white and colour lithographs by some of the key proponents of the medium; the research further highlights how collaboration between artists and a number of key printers advanced the process of lithography over 200 years. The book also discusses how lithography was promoted to a wider public through specific projects, schemes and groups such as The Senefelder Club, Prints for Schools and through print publishing by workshops such as the Curwen Studio, Miller's Press and more recently by print studios based in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol, Aberystwyth and in London.

Invented by Alois Senefelder in Munich in 1798, originally as a process for printing sheet music and text, the technical development of Fine Art Lithography appears to have been largely dependent upon the interaction and collaboration between artists and printers working closely together. After 1806, collaboration in the UK occurred between Thomas Barker of Bath (1776 - 1847) working in 1812 with the printer John Redman and then from around 1818, the printer Charles Hullmandel (1789 - 1850) - who worked with a great many artists (including John Duffield harding) during the period up until 1850. This latter collaborative partnership led to the development of drawing materials, techniques and processes that were later used particularly in chromolithography. Other key collaborating printers covered by the research, include Thomas Way (1861 -1913), Stanley Jones (19933-2023) (Curwen Studio) and more recently printers such as Elspeth Lamb, Alastair Clarke, Lee Turner and Paul Croft.

Unlike their counterparts in Europe, particularly in Paris where there was a long history of artists working at family-run Ateliers, from around 1850, British printers became increasingly unionised, working for commercial firms in the main industrial cities and towns. Arguably, the evolution to a more Parisian style atelier did not occur in the UK until the establishment of the Curwen Studio in 1958 and the emergence in the 1960s, of Open Print Workshops and Studios based in part, more upon the ideas emanating from American workshops such as ULAE and Tamarind.

During the first half of the C20th in Britain, there was also a strong demarcation between printing and printmaking; taught in separate departments at art schools, the latter was nonetheless dependent upon the former for process, technique and more importantly - expertise. Whilst some artists were unquestionably skilled printers, in reality most artists' lithographs in Britain were printed by journeymen either in their spare time, or as a subsidiary activity at a larger commercial concern. There were of course some enterprises such as The Curwen Press and The Devenish Brothers in London and the Harley Brothers in Edinburgh that did actively work with artists during the period, up until the late 1950s.

That lithography provides a means for the reproduction of drawings made directly on to the surface of a stone or plate, allows for greater spontaneity and freedom of expression. Seen too as a painterly form of printmaking, lithography exploits the gestural capability of pencil, crayon, ink and reticulating tusche wash. Augmented by commercial techniques of transfer lithography, plates and photo plates and processes of colour printing, has resulted in a versatile process capable of printing just about every kind of image conceivable. As such the exhibition and book include examples of work by: Thomas Shotter Boys, J D Harding, James McNeil Whistler, John Elwyn, and the great many artists who worked with Stanley Jones at the Curwen Studio including Ceri Richards, Josef Herman, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. More recent examples of lithographs from the Aberystwyth University Collection include those shown at SPGW and any collected since 2000