a short video interview with leonspilliaert.be<\/a>. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright Scholars program and the Belgian American Education Foundation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Helena de Barros, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro<\/strong>
\nMaterial logics of printed colour in European and Brazilian <\/strong>chromolithography<\/strong>
\nThis talk examines chromolithographic production and practices in Europe and Brazil from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, drawing on research carried out at the University of Reading\u2019s Department of Typography and on Brazilian archival collections. Grounded in Michael Twyman\u2019s documentary approach, the study investigates technical, material, and chromatic evidence in ephemeral prints, children\u2019s books, and progressive proofs. Special attention is given to the material logic of printed colour, understood as the interplay between tonal construction, sequential presswork, chromatic decision-making, and the economic and cultural factors that shaped lithographic workflows. Through magnified analysis of colour-layer structures, a purpose-built chromatic scale with descriptive universal naming, and visualisations of complex datasets, the study outlines a methodological framework that highlights the layered complexity of chromatic techniques and offers a material-based perspective on printed colour across different cultural contexts.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-02-at-11.52.23-300x213.png\")
\nDr Helena de Barros is an associate professor in the Design programme at ESDI\/UERJ, where she teaches graphic design, digital imaging, and visual technologies. She received the CAPES Award in 2019 (doctoral thesis) and in 2025 (supervision) and was a Research Fellow at Brazil\u2019s National Library (2018\u20132019). She is a member of the CNPq research group Memor\u00e1veis and coordinates the Special Interest Group on Graphic Memory of the Brazilian Society for Information Design. In 2025 she was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing, University of Reading, where she studied chromolithographic techniques in the Michael Twyman Collection. Her work as a researcher, designer, visual artist, and collector of printed artefacts explores visual language, graphic techniques, graphic memory, books, and ephemeral prints, with emphasis on Brazilian chromolithography.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Wei Jin Darryl Lim<\/strong>
\nLithography at Riau\u2019s \u2018Gateway to Mecca\u2019: print and scribal labour in <\/strong>Penyengat island, 1856\u201379<\/strong>
\nLithography found its way to a C19 Malay world in 1826, imported First by Dutch and later English missionaries. Yet the ingress for local adaptation and adoption of lithography was arguably through oceanic routes that were linked by port cities along the pilgrimage path of the Hajj to, and from the centres of Islam. Through these streams, religiously-oriented literature and ephemera found their way back to the Malay world. This ushered a broader acceptance of lithography as a viable means of religious textual production, and reproduction.<\/p>\nBy 1856, at least one lithographic press was at work on the island of Penyengat in Riau \u2013 possibly the earliest royal press extant in the Muslim-Malay world. This press was likely acquired by the court of the Yang dipertuan Muda (Viceroy of Riau who resided at Penyengat island). From the literature, this lithographic press seems to have been procured as a means to supplement scribal labour in the production of texts. Islamic histories, translations, ephemera, and legal documents were products that were lithographed by the court; and the lithographic press\u2019 primary function it seems was to serve the bureaucratic needs, and Islamic literary production of Penyengat\u2019s courtly elite.<\/p>\n
This paper will focus on technical aspects of these lithographed texts that emanated from the Penyengat press; and will examine print within this specific nineteenth-century Muslim-Malay milieu, and expand on the court\u2019s links to Singapore-based Muslim commercial lithographers. Despite the lithographic output of Penyengat\u2019s printers, there is a distinct exclusion of the press from epistolary, notary, and bureaucratic documents kept by the Penyengat court; little to no information about its presence, purchase, or use is extant except for the lithographed artefacts themselves. This absence, I will argue, is of significance \u2013 and questions and hypotheses surrounding this lacuna within Penyengat records will be discussed.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-02-at-11.52.30-293x300.png\")
\nDr Wei Jin Darryl Lim is an independent book and printing historian. His research remit focuses on the histories of the lithographic book in Southeast Asia in relation to global histories of printing; the movement of printing materials and technologies, and missionary printing and typefounding projects in the Malay archipelago. His doctoral research on the early history of Muslim-Malay lithography and has been published in the journal Indonesia and the Malay World. Darryl was previously the American Printing History Association\u2019s Mark Samuels Lasner Fellow (2019), and an Early Career Research Fellow at the University of London (2022\u201323).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Asiel Sep\u00falveda, Babson College<\/strong>
\nPicturing \u201cthe fog effect:\u201d Lithography and the spectacle of sugar <\/strong>manufacturing in nineteenth-century Cuba<\/strong>
\nThis paper will examine the cloudy visuality of Cuban sugar plantations. It focuses on the representation of fog,\u00a0 smoke and steam that emerges from industrial machinery, boiling houses and burning landscapes. During the early nineteenth-century, Cuban planters became avid technocrats. They invested in industrial machinery, railroads, steamships and many other technologies including lithography. This modernizing campaign attracted European artists who began to produce images for local elites. The paper argues that \u201ccapturing the fog effect,\u201d a phrase that one lithographer used in his image, became an imperative to represent the modernization of the Cuban landscape. The fog, I add, also served to obscure the relationships between industry, environmental destruction and the exploitation of slave labor.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-02-at-11.52.36-300x224.png\")
\nDr Asiel Sep\u00falveda is Assistant Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Babson College. His research focuses on the development of lithographic arts in late colonial Cuba. Sep\u00falveda\u2019s forthcoming book Picturing the Planters\u2019 Metropolis: Art, Slavery and Global Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Havana<\/em>, explores how lithographic artists imagined a modern Havana built under the cultural regimes of Spanish colonialism and plantation slavery.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Mimi Cheng, Kunsthistorisches Institut<\/strong>
\nMedium and message in nineteenth-century maps of East Asia<\/strong>
\nThis paper examines an unstudied series of maps published in China and Japan between 1875 and 1898. Each is titled \u201cMap of East Asian Territories\u201d [\u4e9e\u7d30\u4e9e\u6771 \u90e8\u8f3f\u5730\u5716] and shows the eastern Qing empire, southern Manchuria, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. In addition to having the same title, they are also remarkably similar in both content and composition. By tracing the genealogy of each unique copy and attending to their aesthetic forms and epistemological claims, this paper seeks to chart a way to think about modern maps not just as expressions of sovereignty or territoriality, but also as material artifacts that contain the traces of their making. While they are just some of the countless examples of how foreign printing technologies were introduced and assimilated into local print cultures and economies, this series of maps also serves as a reminder that exchanges occur not just between metageographic categories of east and west, or binaries of foreign and indigenous, but at other geographic scales and relational categories.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-02-at-11.52.44-259x300.png\")
\nMimi Cheng is a cultural historian of the global nineteenth century whose research focuses on transnational visual culture between Europe and East Asia, comparative histories of cartography and the built environment, and the relationship between knowledge and imperialism. She is a postdoctoral researcher with the Lise Meitner Group Coded Objects, where she is completing her first book manuscript. Previously, she was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Newberry Library. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Historical Geography<\/em> and has been supported by the ACLS, SSRC, German Historical Institute Washington, and the Forschungzentrum Gotha at the Universit\u00e4t Erfurt. She earned her PhD from the University of Rochester in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Building on Michael Twyman\u2019s pioneering scholarship, this symposium will explore lithography as a truly global medium. It will consider lithography\u2019s circulation across borders and oceans, its adaptation to diverse linguistic,…Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":804,"featured_media":2930,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[],"coauthors":[49],"class_list":["post-2931","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGlobal Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026 - Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Global Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026 - Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Building on Michael Twyman\u2019s pioneering scholarship, this symposium will explore lithography as a truly global medium. It will consider lithography\u2019s circulation across borders and oceans, its adaptation to diverse linguistic,...Read More >\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-03-05T11:46:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/header.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1334\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"356\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@cbcp_UniRdg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"Lawrence Jones\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/\",\"name\":\"Global Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026 - Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2026-02-02T12:26:08+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-03-05T11:46:50+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Events\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/events\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Global Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/\",\"name\":\"Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing\",\"description\":\"Sub title\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#organization\",\"name\":\"University of Reading\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/logos\/readinglogo.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/logos\/readinglogo.gif\",\"width\":2386,\"height\":782,\"caption\":\"University of Reading\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/cbcp_UniRdg\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Global Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026 - Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Global Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026 - Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing","og_description":"Building on Michael Twyman\u2019s pioneering scholarship, this symposium will explore lithography as a truly global medium. It will consider lithography\u2019s circulation across borders and oceans, its adaptation to diverse linguistic,...Read More >","og_url":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/","og_site_name":"Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing","article_modified_time":"2026-03-05T11:46:50+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1334,"height":356,"url":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/header.png","type":"image\/png"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_site":"@cbcp_UniRdg","twitter_misc":{"Estimated reading time":"13 minutes","Written by":"Lawrence Jones"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/","url":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/","name":"Global Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026 - Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#website"},"datePublished":"2026-02-02T12:26:08+00:00","dateModified":"2026-03-05T11:46:50+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/event\/global-perspectives-on-lithographic-printing-5-6-march-2026\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Events","item":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/events\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Global Perspectives on Lithographic Printing Symposium, 5-6 March 2026"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#website","url":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/","name":"Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing","description":"Sub title","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#organization","name":"University of Reading","url":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/logos\/readinglogo.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/logos\/readinglogo.gif","width":2386,"height":782,"caption":"University of Reading"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/twitter.com\/cbcp_UniRdg"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/2931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/804"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/2931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3063,"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/2931\/revisions\/3063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=2931"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-02-at-11.51.58-300x295.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-02-at-11.52.06-300x235.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/centre-for-book-cultures-and-publishing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/138\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2026-02-02-at-11.52.15-300x252.png\")