Stone & Smoke
Eight stones a poster. Eight passes through the press, eight chances to ruin it, and one perfect sheet at the end.
The Strobridge Lithographing Company of Cincinnati was the best in the world at this, and the magicians knew it. A poster began as a limestone slab, ground flat, drawn on by hand in greasy crayon — one stone for every colour in the finished sheet.
Register was everything. Each sheet ran through the press once per stone, and each pass had to land within a hair of the last, or the imp's grin slid off his face. The pressmen who could hold register on eight stones were paid like surgeons, and they were worth it.
The drawing
An artist — usually unnamed, usually unpaid in glory — drew the whole composition in reverse, directly onto stone. Every imp, every fold of the levitating gown, every letter of the billing. Mistakes meant regrinding the slab and starting over.
The separation
The image was pulled apart into its colours, one stone each. The artist had to imagine the finished sheet while drawing only its crimson, or only its gold — holding eight layers in the head at once.
The press
Grease takes ink, wet stone refuses it. That is the whole secret of lithography, and it is why these sheets have a depth no photographic process ever matched — the colour sits on the paper, laid down wet and thick.
The paste-up
One-sheets, three-sheets, eight-sheets. The largest bills were printed in parts and wheat-pasted onto walls by billposters working ahead of the tour, so a town woke to find a magician had claimed its brickwork overnight.
How we reproduce them.
Restoration, not reinvention. We repair the damage of a century — fold lines, paste residue, the losses at the edges where the billposter's brush tore it. We do not redraw what was never there, and we do not "improve" a colour the pressman chose.
Stone-litho registration honored. Where the original press slipped a hair, the slip stays. That misregistration is the fingerprint of the hand that pulled the sheet, and erasing it would erase the evidence that a person made this.
Every piece named. Performer, printing firm where it is known, and the promise the poster made. Where the firm is unrecorded, we say so rather than guess — the same rule that governs every other claim in this house.
Pre-1931, verified at acquisition. Rights ship PENDING under the public-domain gate until the original is in hand and the locator is confirmed. We would rather show you an honest blank than a beautiful fiction.