Vitreography
Vitreography is a fine art printmaking technique that uses a 3⁄8-inch-thick (9.5 mm) float glass matrix instead of the traditional matrices of metal, wood or stone.
It does not oxidize, nor does it change or interact with the composition of printing inks, especially yellows and whites, which can turn green or gray in contact with metal plates.
[1] According to Claire Van Vliet of Janus Press, intaglio vitreographs also have an advantage over metal in that the glass plate wipes cleanly in non-image areas, allowing bright white to coincide with “black that is velvety as a mezzotint” in the finished print.
[2] Another advantage of vitreograph printmaking is its ability to withstand the pressure of the printing press with no discernible breakdown of the imagery, even after numerous runs.
A particle of grit or dirt between press bed and the plate will create a tension point that will cause the glass to crack when pressure is applied.
[9] He asked his colleague at the University of Wisconsin, printmaker Warrington Colescott, to ink five of the sandblasted plates from the workshop and print them onto paper in his etching press.
[11] In 1976 Littleton retired from teaching and moved to Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where he set up a glass studio, reserving space for an etching press on which he continued to make vitreograph prints.
He encouraged her and his colleagues in glass art, including Ken Carder, Billy Bernstein, Erwin Eisch and Ann Wolff (formerly Wärff), to try their hands at vitreography.
Littleton Studios printer Sandy Willcox and her husband David Lewis, a painter, are credited with discovering that white lithograph ink is a versatile resist for sandblasting intaglio glass plates.
There, the initial onslaught of sand sticks to those areas of the image where ink remains (forming an even more resistant barrier) while etching those parts of the glass revealed by the hand of the artist.
[22] The image is drawn onto a ground glass matrix with water-soluble art materials, over which is applied a film of common caulking silicone thinned with synthetic turpentine.
Master printer Mark Mahaffey has found that frosted Mylar can be used as a printing matrix as well as 3/8” float glass to create a vitreograph using waterless lithography.
They include Harvey Littleton's colleagues in glass art, Dale Chihuly, Erwin Eisch, Shane Fero, Stanislav Libenský, Andy Owen, Paul Stankard, Therman Statom, Sybren Valkema and Ann Wolff.
Painters Walter Darby Bannard, Louisa Chase, Herb Jackson, Mildred Thompson, Emilio Vedova and John Wilde; potters Cynthia Bringle and John Glick, sculptors Sergei Isupov and Italo Scanga and printmakers Glen Alps, Ken Kerslake, Karen Kunc, Tom Nakashima, Judith O’Rourke and Dan Welden and are a few of the artists whose work has been published by the studio.
Titled "Prints from Glass Plates – Vitreographs," the show featured works by Americans and two Germans: Erwin Eisch and Ann Wolff.
