What is an edition of prints in printmaking

Limited edition prints retain and can often increase in value. Whether this is the case however, depends on the artist. Our advice is and has always been, collect art you love — and when or if it appreciates in value consider this an added bonus. A Chop Mark is a mark or seal made with an embossing tool in the margin of an etching or lithograph.

The chop mark holds particular meaning for the printmaker and publisher. Charles Blackman - 'Visage II'. Charles Blackman's 'Visage II' is adorned with both a chop mark from Port Jackson Press the work's publisher and a stamp that reads the artist's name in Japanese.

The stamp was obtained during Charles's successful exhibition at Tokyo's Fuji Television Gallery. Not only a sign of authenticity, these marks also indicate that Charles was satisfied with the finished print — he signed off on it. Charles signing and stamping a collection of his works. Photograph courtesy of Auguste Blackman.

Common sense dictates that prints created during an artist's lifetime are likely more valuable than late impressions. They are after all, more likely to bear the artist's hand both in creation and signature. Charles Blackman - ' Dream Image '. Beyond the edition number and chop mark, sit a range of acronyms. While none of these guarantee additional value, some hold special significance for collectors. Here is a rundown on some collectable acronyms.

Approximately ten percent of a print run are assigned as Artist Proofs. Although printmaking involves reproducing an image, a print is more than just a copy of an original.

Fine art prints are something else entirely, resulting from a close collaboration between the artist and the print studio. Printers — the people who work with the artist to produce an edition — are highly skilled technicians, and are often artists in their own right.

Philip Guston , Gemini G. Set 1 , The complete set of eight lithographs. Prints are not made in large production runs intended solely for commercial sale. A limited number known as an edition are produced, with prescribed routes for initial sale — either through the artist, a commercial gallery or a publisher. As a result they are true works of art, and as important to the artist as drawings or other works on paper. Artists make prints for a variety of reasons. Lucian Freud would create etchings only in black and white following his days in the painting studio, while Ellsworth Kelly applied the same fastidious understanding of colour and form to his editioned work.

Some artists consistently make prints for their entire career — Jasper Johns and Pablo Picasso are famously prolific examples —while others come to printmaking in bursts of activity, such as Barnett Newman. Typically these periods can be aligned to working with a particular print workshop. Here again, fractions may be used to indicate the total number of proofs, and the print number e.

Other proofs may be made at an earlier stage, as the artist and printer develop an image or test different compositions. These are known as state proofs, trial proofs or colour proofs. These can be unique, with differences in colour combinations, paper types or size. When the image is perfected, a proof is made and signed B.

The rest of the edition is matched to this image, which is unique and traditionally kept by the printer. Our catalogue entries will always explain how we have reached the conclusion that a print is an authentic original.

Finally, we indicate how the work is numbered, and whether it is from the standard edition or a proof. A sign of a true print specialist is not only their interest in technique but also their obsession with paper. The choice of paper is an important part of the printmaking process because it can directly influence the nature of what the printed image looks like.

Johns is famous for having pushed for higher quality, heavier paper for his prints, while Warhol loved cheaper, thinner paper for his Soup Can prints from the s to emphasise that they were meant to be enjoyed by the masses. Our condition report also notes whether an item is the full sheet or with full margins, which means that the paper has not been trimmed in some fashion, itself an issue that affects the value. These workshops can be huge production studios with large-scale equipment or small-scale operations with only a few employees.

These prints usually are the property of the studio that produced them. Even though technically they are unfinished prints, in the art market they are worth much more than the regularly editioned work because they reveal the process of the artist in creating the finished work. Sometimes etchings will be assigned this mark as the printmaker experiments with acid exposure to the plate creating darker lines or variations in the design.

Usually a line is drawn on the matrix across and then a print made as proof that the original has been changed and no more prints from it can be made. These are most commonly found in serigraph prints. Edition Varied - Editions made on different paper or with printed with a different color ink are sometimes labeled with this mark. Some artists and printmakers choose to number these prints with Roman numerals instead of Arabic numerals Eg.

This by all means is not the definitive guide. There are other marks and labels that are used in countries with different standards. Feel free to share any that you don't see on the list by commenting below. Cart 0.