The Grammar of Lithography

W. D. Richmond's The Grammar of Lithography (1878) is a comprehensive and instructive work on the many varieties of lithography - with all their attendant materials and instruments - described and explained in practical terms for the active participant and the amateur enthusiast alike. Richmond's Grammar should also be understood as part of a wider movement of nineteenth-century industrial disclosure, where pockets of masterly knowledge previously available to apprentices and company employees alone were being made much more widely available through impartial manuals and guides. This noble cause was intended to bring down the walls of ignorance and trade secrecy and to foster an open atmosphere of mutual understanding. In the realm of lithography, Richmond's Grammar was the first treatise to achieve this. While the work forgoes any historical or overly theoretical discussion, it does provide an excellent example of practically oriented expertise in the graphic arts.