Lithographie Ltd

11/08/2025

“Mr Biggie,” one of the most famous Tsumeb azurites, sitting for a photo shoot.

06/08/2025

Flattered.
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17/07/2025

We've still not decided, we're looking now at a couple of new options and a couple of fan favorites.

14/07/2025

En route to the office — the long awaited Agate monograph. Books will start going into the mail tomorrow afternoon!

12/07/2025

Heads up for the voyeurs among us, we’re in the throes of Sotheby’s “Geek Week.”

Sotheby’s Science & Natural History Department presents Geek Week 2025, the return of our annual marquee science series bringing together our three most exciting categories – Natural History, History of Science & Technology, and Space Exploration – for a week of sales unlike any other. This"u2...

08/07/2025

Swedish chemist and mineralogist Torbern Olof Bergman (1735 – 1784) was among the brilliant 18th century minds who defined the Swedish Enlightenment. Bergman worked to classify minerals quantitively, according to their chemistries, which along with structure is a defining characteristic of minerals today. Fabulously curious, he published on subjects including thunderstorms and electricity as well as the aurora borealis. He discovered carbonated water, isolated elemental nickel, and successfully built all of the known forms of calcite from a cleavage rhomb. His scientific work on chemical affinities even inspired a Goethe novel on human affinities!

The mineral torbernite was named for Torbern Bergman, who died on this day in 1784. He was 49.

Image courtesy of traders dot com

06/07/2025

Round 2
A number of specimens in both sets are thumbnails. Should size be a factor?

05/07/2025

Let the Games Begin!!

Please find herein, the first round of Tsumeb cover drafts. All are Scovil photos as a number of our regular photographers may not have submitted as the cover is imminent, hopefully we’ll have more options within the week.

The best cover images for our monographs have a silhouette that is square to vertical (but not too vertical), is not too busy, and screams, in this case, Tsumeb. Of the 1200 images already collected, only about 15 fit the bill. We need access to a digital negative for the cover (and most full page placements), so may ask for a new photo should we settle on a specimen with a technically inadequate image.

We are wide open in terms of subtitles; i.e., suggestions are more than welcome.

Specimen owners are not credited, as we do not want to skew the voting. We are very much looking forward to your comments.

03/07/2025

A visit to Pompeii provides a sense of place, scale, and daily lives of the lost city and its 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. But it only gives a glimpse of the objects that that were the backdrop for it all. Those are largely preserved at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN), in downtown Naples. Many of these objects are testaments to the lapidary arts, which were clearly alive and well in pre-eruption Pompeii.

14/03/2025

More than one year in the making, The Smale Collection 3 is on its way to the bindery in Canada. Special thanks to Jeff Scovil, Dave Bunk, Corey Neumeier, Mike Jensen, Connor Pallis, Rob Lavinsky, and Michael Bainbridge for helping us get this beautiful volume to press!