Lithographie Ltd

07/17/2025

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

07/14/2025

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

07/12/2025

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...

07/08/2025

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

07/06/2025

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

07/05/2025

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.

07/03/2025

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.

07/01/2025

Agate is one of a handful of minerals (or mineraloids) that primarily derive their colors from inclusions of mineral particles; i.e., natural “earth” pigments. Mixed into a colorless or white medium (such as chalcedony), pigments impart predictable color palettes, the shades of which are precisely controlled by concentration, particle size, and mineral phase. These formulae have, in the last few centuries, been reduced to a science, which has enabled, for example, commercial paint companies to produce colors that reliably match prepared swatches. But for many millennia prior, mixing earth pigments was an art.

Iron oxides goethite, lepidocrocite, and hematite were used to color the Palaeolithic cave paintings at Lascaux (France). Tried and true, those pigments were still staples of the artist’s tool kit 18,000 years later. We recently visited Pompeii and learned that fresco painters used carbon and iron oxides, which were readily available. They also had access to exotic (and expensive) colors such as blue, which was derived from lazurite/lapis. Cinnabar (HgS) created cinnamon to crimson, but the surfaces colored with cinnabar quickly acquired an undesirable black/gray patina.

A total of 26 pigments (including lime wash and vegetables dyes) as well as numerous nuanced tone and shade “recipes,” have been identified in frescos in Pompeii.

Updated with a few more photos after a visit to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN).

06/29/2025

One of our “fans” remarked that out poor photo of the 25 cm wide German pyrargyrite verged on criminal; so we went back for a shot at redemption, asking a photographer for another take as well. Not sure these will suffice, but it is not for lack of trying! kakovirac, these are for you!

06/29/2025

Nine hundred eighty dealers have booth space at the 2025 Sainte-Marie Show. Notably absent are many (whispers are upwards of 200) non-EU dealers, who have abandoned the show over the last few years. Rumors of cash-sniffing dogs and customs crack-downs, not to mention the very real heavy police and army presence, are among the things that have cast a pall. We personally checked in with two well-known dealers rumored to have been “shut down” by customs, both rumors were emphatically debunked. True or false, however, rumors can be damaging. What appears to be true is that several top end, non EU dealers were required to post bonds as high as 600,000 € and have thus declined to setup. The dealers at the show this are required to number their specimens, and cash transactions over 1000 € are prohibited.

France has always been a little ornery about under the table dealings. One time in the 1990s, I went down to the customs office and sweet talked a friend out off “jail.” He had been detained for the crime of having in his possession an aquamarine specimen with a 5 figure price tag — a consignment that he was returning. I have also more than once had my vehicle thoroughly searched for merchandise at check-points outside of town. But perhaps lured by the food and wine and scenery, dealers and buyers have been generally undeterred. Now, though, it feels a little bit different.

The crowds are still very much here, and the restaurants we asked report doing more than 15% of their annual business during the week-plus of the show. But without the big fish, will the show retain its cache? Strict customs controls have effectively ended the international mineral business in Zurich and Canada, as it would anywhere. But those are worries for another day. In 2025, after 60 years, we are pleased to report that Sainte-Marie is going strong!

03/14/2025

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!