Australian Printing

Printing process

Australia was a little different than most countries because of the fairly small print runs that were needed for distribution. The process of stone lithography was the most common, but quite often a slightly different process was used called 'hand lithos'. These were more economical for smaller runs than the standard stone lithography.

Hand lithos were made using flexible zinc plates that were rolled around a large printing drum. The term 'hand litho' comes from the fact that the inks were applied to the plate by hand by the printers. Here is the standard process:

The artwork would be hand drawn and hand lettered. The artists would use a black litho crayon and produce the image directly onto the plate. They would generally have US poster art or pressbook images available. They would either trace or use their own imagination, or a combination of both to come up with a design. Images would be drawn in shades of grey. Most posters were generally printed from 3 or 4 colours using a separate plate for each colour. The poster would be first passed through the plate producing a black and white image. It would be passed through the machine an additional time for each colour. When the posters were printed the plates would be cleaned and reused - no original art would be saved. The paper used would be shiny on one side and rough on the other to accept the litho printing.

Some collectors classify them as the same. Also for some reason some dealers think that listing the poster as 'stone' litho raises the value.

It's fairly easy to tell the difference between them - simply put a hand litho next to a stone litho daybill and the differences are obvious. Stone lithos have a finer grain to the inking, a greater subtlety to the shading and colors, a finer line to the black plate art, and so on.

Oddly enough, hand-litho actually requires a degree more skill in some respects, which is why some that are poorly done are used as examples to argue the superiority of 'stone' lithos.

a special thanks to John Reid at MovieMem.com
John has a GREAT selection of Australian posters so be sure check out his site.

Production Sheet

The standard printing sheet was 30x40. On this they printed a one sheet (27x40) and then trimmed off one border. Here is a rare sample provided by Phil Edwards Cinema Arts Pty Ltd: