Lithography for Fruit Labels part 3

These printer craftsmen were really amazing.  For a five-color label, they used five individual stones for each of the colors.  Each stone had to be differently stippled with the same image. When they first blended different color hues  this was done by separation by hand and eye.  The craftsman would refer to the original drawing and note how much red was on an apple, and choose where the different colored highlights (blue, green, etc.) needed to fall.

Many years later this blending of hues was mechanized with camera filters.  The amount of each color was determined by the filters.  The craftsman's individual subtle differences in the texture colors were no longer present with this new mechanical process.

All the lithography stones in San Francisco were brought in from Bavaria. (The limestone quarries in Bavaria were mostly destroyed during World War I.) The limestones were unbelievable heavy!  It's said that the smallest stones used weighed atleast 50 pounds. These heavy stones were also very fragile. Larger stones used for very large prints (much larger than the fruit labels) often weighed up to 300 pounds.  It could require up to six men to lift these into the bed of the press. It was important that they were perfectly aligned with the paper to retain registration integrity. The final output quality and texture was exquisite.

One of the print houses, Schmidt Litho, these limestones were stored beneath the sidewalks in basements.  These stones survived the San Francisco earthquake.  The stones became so valuable they were continually ground down again and agiain to be used for new printing designs.