The Recognition, Appreciation, and Display of Art Prints

The Recognition, Appreciation, and Display, of Art Prints

This anthology describes how to recognise different printed results, why one process is more fitting than another to achieve the artists ideas and how to conserve, mount, and display the printed matter. The term Art Print is used to separate commercial work, however old or distinguished, from work expressly designed for a limited run of numbered and signed (this is not always the case) copies. It is acknowledged by all artists and craftsmen as being aesthetically pleasing to see work produced by hand using the very basic of tools, materials and presses. Recognition of the printing process is made by: checking areas of solid colour for depth, cover and extent, the method by which vignettes, gradations and soft edges are achieved, what type of paper used, whether the process creates an embossed effect or transparent impression and the fineness of the detail. Appreciation is defined by: a knowledge of art history and printing processes, artist's mediums and tools and craftsmanship skills. It is important to remember that the high art movement is to do with hand skills not using highly sophisticated reproductive techniques.

The Recognition of Linocuts and Woodcuts

Linocuts are simple in that the technique is not difficult and the material cheap. However, the process has all the trials and tribulations experienced by the more complicated methods of reproduction. The linoleum is made up of linseed oil, glue and cork that is backed-up with canvas. The lino cutting tools range from a knife, V shaped blades, a selection of gouges and a chisel. The reproduction qualities are ‘white line’, ‘black silhouette’, ‘white silhouette’ and ‘tone’ achieved by hatching a series of finer lines. The tools are held in the hand with the ball in the palm. The thumb and the first two fingers grip the tool just above the blade, whilst the little finger steadies the action on the lino. Place the first finger of the other hand on the blade itself and rest the other fingers on the lino. This will steady the cutting action and prevent slipping. Ink is mixed up on a hard smooth surface with a palette knife and applied to a hand held roller. The roller applies the ink to the linocut to achieve an even coating and the dry paper pressed by spoon, barren or print roller. This is the printer’s method the second is the Japanese where the paper is dampened. The linocut can be printed straight from the lino or mounted on a wooden block. Overprinting further colours increases complexity and diversity of the design. Registration requires the paper to be laid adjacent to lay and registration bars.

Woodcut prints give a similar impression to linocuts. They use similar tools that give a simple, bold reproduction when compared to other printmaking processes. However, woodcuts compare favourably, with all the other printmaking methods by giving freedom of expression. They show large shadow areas with very few mid-tones. The fine detail stops abruptly with no tailing off – which makes fading out impossible. The picture is frequently surrounded by a broad black border or frame – caused by the edge of the block. Relief prints are made from blocks in which the white/non image parts of the artwork are cut away to create valleys below the printing surface, leaving the image area to be printed standing proud ready to receive the ink.

The object of all printmaking methods is to make as close a copy as possible to the original. For the woodblock maker, as for all artist/printmakers, there is a freedom to produce their own interpretation. To improve the range and show fine detail other colours maybe cut as extra printings. As woodblocks can be printed alongside the typematter this was the favoured commercial method of book illustration for early books. The printed impression tends to have a squashed appearance with hollow centre typical of a potato printing. Hans Holbein the Younger, 1497 – 1543, ranks amongst the finest of draughtsmen more sensitive than Durer with greater universal appeal.

Generally woodcut book illustration was perfected in Italy – at a higher level than the German school, ‘their chiaroscuros, the most successful ever made by European print makers’, W. Ivins, Curator The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930. Wood engraving can be mistaken for rather crude metal engravings. Usually a reproduction of pen and ink drawings. They are a great improvement in detail and variation of tone - than woodcuts, as outlined by: W M Ivins, Jr., How Prints Look, New York, 1943.

In 1777 a competition was arranged to see who could produce the best woodcut. It was won by Thomas Bewick who used copperplate engraving tools to cut across the grain of boxwood instead of with the grain. This allowed finer lines. However, commercially woodcuts lost out to metal engraving at about the same-time.

Recognition of Wood Engravings

All processes using a raised image: potatoe, lino, wood, plastic and metal are likened to letterpress printing where the single letter, word and picture is set in a block... its raised image carrying the ink. The printed result shows a hard outside image with a furry edge with a soft centre - an image that could be described as squashed. To produce a less black impression the raised image can be lowered slightly to give a grey. The harder the printing surface the greater the detail able to be produced therefore the sharper the finer work. This applies to all cut, gouged, scraped and chiselled surfaces. Engraved prints represent pictures and designs constructed from fine lines either standing alone or hatched or cross-hatched to give the impression of tone work. Wood engravings are represented as negative - mainly black impressions. Thomas Baxter patented a method of overprinting colours using wooden blocks. A line drawing is first made to be used as a key, to register the numerous colour printings. The history of relief printing is confused but thought to be used in the fifth century in the Middle and Far East for fabric design. Woodcuts began to be used in the fifteenth century in Europe at the sametime paper was being manufactured. Previously books and texts were being penned and drawn on parchment. Hans Holbein (1497-1543), Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) and Lucas van Leyden (1494-1533) could be described as producing superb examples of the woodcut process. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the engraving method of picture reproduction had reach such a high standard that the process carried on for a further century Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), Charles Keene (1823-1891) and Gustave Dore (1832-1883) perfected book illustrations. In the 1920s Eric Gill (1882-1940) illustrated and produced prints for publishing by the Golden Cockerel Press. As a method of producing pictures the relief process gave way to intaglio in about the sixteenth century. However, art prints are continued to be made by artists and engravers as a means of expression. To clear up the misconceptions and problems of interpretation and identification the French referred to both woodcuts and wood engravings as "gravure sur bois" (engraving in wood).

==Recognition of Copperplate Engravings== line Intaglio comes from the Italian word itaglione and means to cut or to engrave. A design is engraved, cut, scratched or incised into a metal plate by the burin or graver. This tool extracts a fine spiral of metal, the deeper the lines cut the darker the printed impression made. Vignettes and tones are obtained by hatching or cross-hatching. The engraved lines on the plate are filled with printing ink. Dampened paper laid over the plate is placed under pressure this extracts the ink from the engraved lines. An engraving can be assessed by looking at the broad areas of work – where the print is made to show straight or wavy lines – this occurs mainly in the sky. In the highlights and mid-tones, the lines thicken and taper to show the drawing – the light and dark areas. Further up the definition range towards solid black, the tones are crosshatched to produce even darker shades. The darkest shadows, nearest black, hold the detail well. It is the sharpness and fine detail which defines the process. Buildings were drawn mechanically using a parallel ruler, which in effect looked more like a technical drawing. Under a magnifying glass all lines appear to be slightly broken with a furry edge.

The edge of the print is ruled-up to form a border and usually signed and titled. The edge of the metal plate leaves an indentation in the paper and there maybe ink spots and a slightly grubby appearance caused by the printer not wiping his palm over the plate to remove the last vestiges of ink.

Recognition of Mezzotints and Aquatints

Both these intaglio techniques aim to produce a crayoned effect similar to pencil on rough paper - to reproduce a sketched pencil drawing, charcoal, and crayon and watercolour paintings. Essentially these were art forms that could only be produced for a limited run. The ink was applied by hand with a dabber pressing the ink into the cells. Finally the plate is wiped clean with a muslin cloth and then polished using the palm of the hand. This is a lengthy process, each inking-up, each printed copy, gradually wears away the surface of the plate making each proceeding copy show greater detail. That is a general effect for most print art forms which partly explains why the finished copies are numbered. When multi-coloured prints are produced they are inserted – stuck onto plain pages, or into printed frames, within a page of type. The printmaker tries his best to reproduce the original in such a way that it is difficult to tell them apart - to make a facsimile. To do this requires a number of etching using hard and soft grounds.

Mezzotints are worked in reverse – from soft dark tones to faint highlights. Their exponents worked between 1620 and 1820. They are rare to find and most expensive the style known as the English manner. The important point to look for is the sharp edged specks, often produced with roulette. Look for the impressed plate mark this will indicate that it is an etching not a lithograph.Aquatints are a much softer effect - look very much like a continuous tone photographic print – showing a full range from dark to light, with soft vignettes.

Recognition of a Lithograph

Coloured lithographs under 40x30 inches are called chromolithographs, larger sizes are referred to as lithographic posters. Lithographic colour prints made by the artist and not copied by someone else are called autolithographs; they are not much larger than 30x20 inches, and often a great deal smaller. There can be no mistaking their appearance: they show thin transparent colours with a fairly large tonal range, much of the print-image depicts a grained crayoned appearance made by the artist applying the greasy chalk to the plate or stone printing surface. Various techniques are available to the artist, to achieve special effects, in copying the original artist's use of colour, brush strokes and canvas texture. They range from the use of an airbrush to Ben Day mediums, crayons for stump, jumper and finger tinting, sponge and scraper (only for stone surfaces), dotted pen and litho ink gives a stippled effect either random dot, mechanical or shell shaped, often applied in conjunction with chalk work. Cigarette cards and greeting cards were often totally drawn using a stippled effect and are today considered collectables. Litho colour art prints tend to look soft - without hard lines, edges and shapes, the detail in highlight and shadow indistinct - caused in part by multiple printings. Whatever the process used, accurate registration is always essential. Lithography was developed by the Bavarian Alois Senefelder, (1771-1834), in 1798, to produce scripts. He called the planographic process a chemical form of printing. It is a reproduction method which uses crayon and ink to produce the printing image and a metal plate or stone to carry that image. The greasy black crayon and ink repels water used to dampen the plate or stone which allows the greasy image to be recharged with ink. Printing directly off the plate or stone reverses the image. Before offset machines were invented the image had to be drawn in reverse. The first uses of lithography were commercial. By 1810 both William Blake and Henry Fueli published work. Goya was the first notable artist to use the process in 1825. Soon after Goya the Impressionist movement started using the method appreciating that the finished work was as close to painting and crayoning as can be expected by a reproduction method. Between the two world wars Curwen Press, Baynard Press and Chromoworks encouraged such artists as Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Doris Zinkheisen. Commercial hand drawn lithographic posters and prints finally ended in 1958.

Recognition of Screen Printing

Silk screen printing or the screen printing process uses a tight stretched fabric carrying a stencil image on a frame. Colour is forced through the open areas of the stencil to print an image on the surface underneath. Detailed work was produced in Japan in the eighteenth century although the Chinese are reputed to have used stencils long before. In Europe during the Middle Ages stencils were used to reproduce religious pictures. William Morris designed images for fabric which led in the early twentieth century to both France and England leading America into the turn of the century. During WW1 the process was used to produce banners, flags and bunting. The first automatic screen printing machine came into being and patented in 1925. As with all commercial reproduction techniques artists took up the process to reproduce their work. This is the perfect medium for the aspiring printmaker for it is relatively cheap to set up the process. They are obvious to the collector showing broad areas of flat colour which are slightly raised on the surface giving no fine detail. It takes a lot of skill to get the best out of the process and its unique form. The frame can carry meshes made of a number of materials from vegetable, synthetic and metallic. Stencils are made by hand, photographic, scanner or by using a combination to show direct or indirect images. The art is to produce a number of exact reproductions all in register if more than one colour is employed.--Terence Kearey (discuss • contribs) 14:32, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Identifying the Printing Process

When assessing a print in an auction room, hanging on a wall, or stacked on a market stall, every clue to its provenance is a step towards giving it a value. You will have to be prepared to identify the printing process – knowing what each process is capable of doing whilst giving it a rough position in printing history; some idea about papermaking will stand you in good stead. Understand and recognise hand production methods whilst using a magnifying glass – knowing what process to eliminate and what it is likely to be.

In the 1900s artists instigated a practice known as signing proofs or prints. The signature or monogram written or printed at the bottom of the print close to the work balanced alongside the name identifying the picture. Engravings too were inscribed giving all the information about the print – Delineavit delin meaning draftsman and Sculpsit sc the engraver. Take care that false signatures are not added to increase its value! Collector’s marks written, stamped, or embossed, applied to prints - to give an owners identity. Like the signature and title all these identifying marks help give a guide to value.

All intaglio prints bear a plate mark where the pressure of the press on the damp paper creates an indentation. This mark should be located for it gives a clue to the printing process. If possible it should be shown in the picture area – be exposed by the mount. Try and see if the ink is sitting-up off the paper. This embossing character caused by the ink vehicle soaking into the paper leaves the pigment sitting on top. Lithographs drawn on stone also can have the indentation showing but is normally too far from the picture area. Take care looking at coloured prints. Having colour is rare being very expensive to produce and only done to illustrate technical plates for scientific reasons to help identify species of plant or animal. Ordinary etchings were rarely coloured – the colouring maybe new, applied by brush and water paint. Colouring does not increase the value of the print and can detract, and lose its value, if too bright and heavy. See if you can detect any printing on the reverse. This would indicate that it was removed from a book, cut out from a newspaper or magazine which would reduce its value.

The Backing

Turn the picture over and look at the back. Does it look original or has it been renewed… Is it the same age as the frame. Look at the means of securing the backing board. Are the nail heads protruding and are they going rusty. In the Victorian past well framed prints had the whole of the back covered in brown paper and more than likely the framer would put his label on or stamp it. This might give the correct date of the print or value by a collectors mark. It is highly unlikely that the print is pre-Victorian even though the frame is original.

The Frame

The quality of the wood frame might give you an indication of the original value or the print. No-one would pay a lot of money to have a poor print framed. The wood or moulding maybe inappropriate – it also maybe part of its charm. Look at the hanging wire, does it look old… if its string then the print has been re-framed. The method of tying the wire to the screw-eye or hook will show how carefully it’s been framed and cared for.

The Paper

The quality of the paper, the print is printed on, will give a clue as to provenance, and age. Etchings should contain the indentation of the plate. The quality of the impression will show whether the print is a proof or part of the original run. The cleanliness of the print will show the craftsmanship of the printer. Most old prints were printed on a hand made paper, woven paper is soft, called laid paper uncoated with a visible fleck. The woven paper is thin when held up to the light and might show a watermark. Watermarks were introduced in 1380. Countermarks – a smaller mark, made in 1670, often made in conjunction. The wire marks of the drying rack should show. Wove paper developed in 1755 does not show any drying marks. Engraving paper and lithographic transfer paper is dampened for printing. Over hard papers or papers coated should not be used except for modern printmaking and copying.

Proof Impressions

Whatever the process: the fist copies taken from the table or press are trial ‘pulls’ – to see if the work is printing correctly, the machine has been set up well, the paper is suitable – in the correct condition, and the drawn matter is all that it should be. These first pulls are called ‘proofs’ and have a value too. It takes at least twenty pulls to achieve a likeable result. These are also numbered by the proofer to tell him the order of correction – hopefully each proof is better than the last until the machine is ready to make the final ‘run’. It will be these that are numbered, out of the total, say out of a hundred, to be run-off, and given as a fraction. If you do buy a proof which maybe distinguished by the dirtiness of the copy make sure it is complete – has all the colours printed.

Framing Prints and Watercolours

No print should be displayed or shown without a secondary cardboard cut-out. This is called the ‘mount’ cut-out of calico or buff coloured mounting card - to make a window - large enough to allow the plate indentation to show - on intaglio work , the print’s number, the engraver’s, or artist’s name, and the picture’s title, if it has one. The mount is cut with a mount cutter which gives an oblique cut, allowing eight centimetres, from the edge of the mount to the cut-out, top, and sides, and nine millimetres at the bottom – larger to give optical balance. The print is attached to the mount; at the top only, to allow movement - as the print breaths… the mount also protects the print – keeping it away from the glass. All mounts should show: pencil, pen, or washed lines as a secondary drawn frame, three millimetres from the window – in a series of broad and fine lines – to emulate wood moulding or another cut mount. When the print has been mounted it is inserted into the frame’s rebate on top of the glass. A backing board of plywood or hardboard is inserted to protect the print. The backing board is tacked into position then sealed using a broad, brown paper tape mitred and stuck two millimetres from the frames sides. The tape prevents flies and insects from penetrating between print and glass. The frame – of moulded wood, should be narrow and undecorated or simply decorated. It is bad form to over elaborate frame or mount taking away from the print its simplicity and charm. The brass covered steel cored wire attached to screw-eyes or rings one third of the depth from the top of the frame. This allows the picture to tilt forward to prevent reflections. All pictures should be positioned on the wall with the top of the mount’s window in line with the top of one’s head – picture at eye-line height.

Acknowledgements

Aloys Senefelder's, A Complete Course of Lithography, published, 1818. William M Ivins, Jr. Notes on Prints: published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1930. Graham Hudson’s The Victorian Printer: published by Shire Publications Limited, 1996. Paul Goldman’s Looking at Prints, Drawings and Watercolours, published by the British Museum in association with the J Paul Getty Museum, LA. Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking: published by the British Museum. Publications, 1980. Looks Great But How Do You Print It, and Other Peoples Jobs, two articles published in the British printer 1980. The Craft of Woodcuts by John R Biggs, published by Blandford Press Ltd., 1963, How to make lino cuts by A Stewart Mackay, F.R.S.A., A.T.D. printed in London 1940 by W. Foulsham & Co., Ltd.

Authors

• Terence Kearey