Lithography is a method of printing. The name is built from Greek pieces meaning “stone” and “to write,” because the first printers drew on a flat limestone with a greasy crayon. They then wet the stone: water stayed on the bare rock, and oily ink stuck only to the drawing. Paper pressed on the stone picked up the picture. The stone has mostly given way to a metal plate, but the idea is the same — some parts take ink, some do not. Artists still use it for limited prints. A later industrial form, offset lithography, is how a great deal of ordinary printing (magazines, packaging, some books) has long been done. In a museum, lithography usually means the art method; in a print shop it may mean that wider family of printing.