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Our Horizontal Bicycle Posters are original vintage antiques , not reprints. Older cycling posters are archivally mounted on acid free paper with museum wheat paste and backed with linen canvas (Linen Backed). This protects the fragile poster as early posters were printed on inexpensive paper Their purpose was to be glued up on a wall or kiosk and most probably to have a different one replace it in a short time. This is much like our modern roadside billboards.
Many of the older posters were printed using a technique known as stone lithography. Stone lithography is a printing method that is based on the principle that oil and water do not mix. Using a greasy substance, an image is drawn or painted on to a flat piece of limestone in reverse. Next, the stone is moistened and the surface is then coated with an oil-based ink which would only adhere to the waxy image and be repelled by the water being held by the stone's surface. Paper is pressed to the stone and the ink transfers the image onto the paper. The application of each color is printed separately on different stones through a careful alignment process called registration. The popularity of this process grew because hundreds of copies could be made which closely matched the color and graphic imagery of the original art. This was a major breakthrough in printing processes.