grease and acid-resistant ink

Ingredients

grease, acid-resistant ink

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

The introduction describes the lithography technique (literally 'stone printing') developed by Alois Senefelder (1771–1834) in the late eighteenth century. The process does not use individual punch-cut letters like typography but instead involves etching text or images directly onto flat, stone tablets (p. 10). The image is then reproduced using a combination of grease and acid-resistant ink (p. 10). This method was adopted for large-scale book production in various regions, including Persia, China, and Southeast Asia, as it bypassed some of the aesthetic constraints of early Arabic moveable type (p. 10).

Evidence

"etching on flat, stone tablets and reproducing the image using a combination of grease and acid-resistant ink."

Remarks

The adoption of mechanical print in the Islamic world followed a 'long revolution' where local actors negotiated between scribal traditions and new technologies (p. 7). While typography was the dominant mode in Egypt and the Ottoman heartland, lithography was frequently deemed a more appropriate technology for Muslim communities who found early typeset versions of scriptures, such as the 1829 Hooghly edition of the Qur'an produced in Calcutta, aesthetically lacking due to 'crude typefaces and sparse use of ornamentation' (p. 11). This aesthetic preference was deeply rooted in the existing manuscript culture where script variation (al-aqlām al-sittah) functioned as a secondary code for meaning (p. 9). Lithographic ink allowed for a reproduction of the handwritten form that better preserved the 'technical and emotional structures of the language' (p. 11).