What is Lithophane?

The short answer is that Lithophane is a 3D printed monochrome photo. Now, I do understand that this explanation is not exactly intuitive and doesn’t really tell you much about what the end result is going to look like, let me explain…

A lithophane (French: lithophanie) is a molded artwork in very thin translucent plastic that can be seen clearly only when back lit with a light source like a window, lamp or a candle.

A lithophane presents a three-dimensional image – completely different from two-dimensional engravings and daguerreotypes that are “flat”. The images change characteristics depending on the light source behind them. Window lithophane panel scenes change throughout the day depending on the amount of sunlight. The varying lightsource is what makes lithophanes more interesting to the viewer than two-dimensional pictures.

The process I use to create a lithophane from your wedding photo, or any other photo for that matter, is 3D printing. The 3d printer creates very thin layers, thicker in spots where the photo is darker and thiner where it has briter spots. This long process can take a minimum of 6 hours (depending on size of the photo as well as the amount of details on it) and the end result is a “3d topography map of a photo” which appears “en grisaille” or in gray tones (monochrome) when lit from behind.
Depending what plastic was used, the 3d printed lithophane often has a hint of sepia or brown-ish colour which is a result of plastic not being exactly pure white.

The plastic I use for my lithophanes is 100% recucled from other things and is biodegradable.

While the 3d printing process of creating lithophanes is fairly new, the lithophanes themselves had been known for quite a while. European lithophanes were first produced nearly at the same time in France, Germany, Prussia, and England around the later part of the 1820s.