Lunar Selenography draws from the great engraved moon maps of the 19th century — Beer & Mädler's Mappa Selenographica, Neison's "The Moon," and Schmidt's exhaustive crater surveys. Craters are built from hatched relief shading, ringed by cool gray rims, and bounded by a near-black terminator shadow.

Over the whole sheet runs a fine selenographic graticule of warm sepia lines, threaded with engraved Latin feature labels. The field is never paper-white: it is dark slate, the color of a charcoal printing ground, so the lit limb of the Moon reads as carved light against shadow.