Imprimerie Lemercier

The Imprimerie Lemercier was one of the great lithographic printing houses of nineteenth-century Paris, and the firm most responsible for establishing chromolithography as a medium capable of genuine artistic and scientific ambition. It was founded by Joseph Lemercier (1803–1887), who had trained as a lithographer and opened his own establishment in Paris in the late 1820s.

Lemercier grasped early that lithography’s potential went far beyond the reproduction of drawings: in close collaboration with chemists, artists, and publishers, he developed and refined chromolithographic techniques that allowed complex color work to be produced at a quality previously achievable only by hand. His firm printed for the leading Parisian map publishers — Andriveau-Goujon among them — as well as for natural history, archaeological, and architectural publications where the accurate reproduction of color was scientifically essential.

By mid-century, the Imprimerie Lemercier had become the default choice for any Parisian publisher whose work demanded the highest standards of color lithographic printing, a reputation it maintained through the end of the century.