Stones from Bavaria: Iranian Lithography in its Global Contexts

Abstract

This essay traces the circulation of the industrial commodities of lithographic presses and stones and compares the uses to which these commodities were put in Iran with other regions at the same time. Using Persian travelogues as sources on scientific exchange, the essay compares Iran's access to lithography with its spread through Europe, Russia and South and Southeast Asia. Using lithography as a gauge of Iran's integration into an industrializing global economy, it compares state-led Iranian attempts to access lithographic commodities with attempts by other regional powers to develop local sources for these ‘stones from Bavaria’. After tracing the role of Christian Evangelicalism in the technology's dissemination, the essay finally contextualizes Iranian uses of lithography in global developments in illustrated and newspaper printing.Since the art of Lithography has risen to considerable celebrity, attempts have been made to discover the same species of stone…– Aloys Senefelder, 1819

Introduction The Frontiers of the Persianate World (ca. 800–1900)

“…Another by-product of the European industrial revolution, the invention of lithography by the German playwright Alois Senefelder in 1796, produced a method of printing that was able to overcome these problems. 233 Thus, within around fifteen years, the technique that Senefelder invented for printing scores of theatrical music was adapted for issuing texts in Persian calligraphy. Fixed to the new iron presses, slabs of imported Bavarian limestone could be written on by hand by traditionally trained calligraphers using wax crayons.…”

Print Culture and Its Publics: A Social History of Bookstores in Tehran, 1900–1950

“…10 The history of print culture more generally has also been explored through the perspective of literary and intellectual history, 11 or in terms of "book history," the evolution of print technologies, and especially lithography in the Persianate world. 12 These approaches have allowed for important contributions to our understanding of the role of print in Iran's encounter with modernity, but they leave many questions unanswered. Who, for example, were the producers and sellers of printed materials in urban environments such as Tehran?…”