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PRINTMAKING
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Introduction |
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Washington Printmakers Gallery sells artist-pulled fine prints. What does this mean? There are so many kinds of "prints" for sale that it's no wonder if you're confused. Is a printed reproduction of a museum work a print? What about a more expensive print which is mass-produced but signed by the artist? Here are some of the basics about fine prints, printmaking, and print collecting. If you'd like to explore printmaking in more depth, we’ve also included a list of resources.
Although most (but not all) printmaking processes allow the artist to create multiple images (an edition), each print (impression) in an edition is printed (pulled) by the artist (or by a print studio or atelier under the artist’s supervision) and is considered an original fine print. At Washington Printmakers Gallery we sell artist-pulled fine prints. This simply means that the entire process, including pulling the print, has been planned and brought to completion by the individual artist. In most cases the artist has also pulled the print. There are some exceptions, such as when an artist who is physically unable to lift and run a large lithographic stone through the press has relied on a master printer to work "as the artist’s hands" under the artist’s close supervision. It is standard practice today for an artist to indicate the number of prints in a particular edition and to number each print in sequence. For instance, 5/15 indicates that this is the fifth impression pulled from an edition of 15 prints. The artist may designate an additional number of prints (usually no more than 10% of the total edition) as trial images, called artist proofs (A/P). These numbers or letters are usually written beneath or beside the print and constitute the artist’s guarantee that no more than the designated number of prints will be pulled. It is customary, once the full edition has been printed, for the artist to deface or permanently mark the plate or block from which the prints were pulled. This is called canceling the plate. In addition to numbering the edition, the artist signs the print, often titles it, and usually includes the year in which the first print in the edition was pulled. (If an artist has relied upon a print studio to pull the edition, the studio affixes an additional mark to the print. At Washington Printmakers Gallery, however, all prints have been pulled by the artist.) Other important information which is not written on the print (but which is included on WPG’s Certificate of Authenticity) is the type of paper (or other material) on which the image is printed, and the dimensions of the image. In addition, any work purchased at Washington Printmakers Gallery is warranted to be presented archivally; all matting and framing materials are archival. |
