From Giclée to Lino - A Guide to Buying Prints

October 15, 2024

Your guide to buying prints at Taylor-Jones and Son.

As a gallery we sell a lot of prints by many artists, but the word print covers a huge range of artworks and price points. In this newsletter, we're going to decode the word print for you to help you navigate this simple term that is way more complicated than you might think. Being informed can really help you make a decision about what to buy and how much to spend.

Deal Beach Shelter, giclée print, Ben Fenton

Giclée Prints

Let's start off with giclée prints. Many of you will have seen the beautiful prints of Ben Fenton and Richard Friend's paintings we have in the gallery. These are giclée prints, high quality reproductions of original artworks created digitally using an inkjet printer. If you're a bit of a word nerd as I am, you might like to know the name comes from the French word to spray or squirt. And literally that is what is happening - ink is being sprayed onto a paper to create the images through a range of tiny nozzles in the print head, and the better the printer, the better the quality of the print. We only use the very best.

As these prints are digital and quick to make, they are often well priced and very good value for money. They give you access to a wonderful copy of an original painting and, with current technology, you don't need to worry about colours fading as these prints are gauranteed not to fade for 75 years according to the printer and ink companies. The only caveat is don't hang your piece in direct sunlight - that can effect them. But you can even counter that by asking for the print to be framed in special conservation glass.

So Giclée Prints are a wonderful way to enjoy art at a more accessible price point than the original works. Of course, if your favourite artist sells their originals for huge sums, their prints will still be expensive. A Damien Hirst print, will be more expensive than the original works of many artists. But the idea of the giclée print is to open the art world up to far more people and we think that works really well. That's why our gallery has an opening price point of just £60 for some prints - all the way up to a few thousand for a Damien Hirst. We think giclée prints give you access to artists, gets art on your walls and are there to be enjoyed and collected.

Loren Beven making her screen print of Ghost Ship

Screen Prints

Let's move on to screen prints. Loren Beven's spooky, glow in the dark, Ghost Ships, are screen prints and the picture above shows how she makes them. To create a screen print, the artist pushes ink through a mesh screen onto a surface which could be paper, card, wood, glass, fabric, metal...the list is endless. Screen printing takes way more time than digital printing. The artist creates the design which they then print onto acetate film to make a stencil, the next step is to apply it to the mesh screen that they will eventually push the ink through. Each colour needs a separate screen so the process is time consuming and it's very tricky to line up the colours perfectly. Even though screen prints are generally editioned, each one really does have the hand of the artist on it and consequently the work commands a higher price than an artist's giclée print.

The Crow Disturbs the Ravens, woodblock print, Julia Manning.

Woodblock Prints
The second image in the pair above is artist Julia Manning her lifting a tiger print free of the woodblock she carved to create the work. The first woodblock prints date back to the Chineses Tang dynasty, from the 7th to the 10th century. It is a print medium with a lot of heritage, in fact, in Europe, throughout the Middle Ages it was used for book printing but the advent of the printing press put paid to that, and today it remains a popular way of making decorative artworks. The first step in the process of creating of one of Manning's woodblock prints has her carving the design carving the design in relief onto a wooden block.You can see from the picture that the block for the tiger is very large. She then goes on to ink the wood with the relevant colours, one colour at a time, then presses paper onto the wood to create an wonderful impression of the finished piece.

Looking Out For You, linocut, Max Angus

Linocut Prints
Some of you, like me, may remember cut fingers gouging patterns into a sheet of lino to make linocut prints at school. It is another form of relief printing where an artist carves an image, this time onto a sheet of lino with a specially designed tool. Max Angus, creates beautifully detailed linocut prints of the natural world and this one, the view of St Margarets with a fox in the foreground, is an absolute favourite. The lino used for this print medium is made of compressed linseed and is fully compostable which ups its environmental credentials. For each piece, Angus carves away the negative area of the image on the sheet of lino leaving the area that needs colour standing proud ready to be inked with a roller. Like screen printing each colour needs a new sheet and extreme precision is needed to line up the colours. Max has won numerous awards and is considered one of the most skillfull UK artists in this medium and subject matter.

Editioning

Most prints are what we call Limited Edition Prints. This means that the artist gaurantees that they will only produce a limited number of each. So you know you're not buying something that is going to end up on every wall in the world, and offers you a degree of exclusivity.

The edition number should be written on the print . If you see 34/50 for example - that means you own number 34 of a total of 50 prints the artist will make. Sometimes you might see AP instead. This means that print is an Artist's Proof. This is a test print and the artists may produce several of these before deciding on the the final look of the print to go on and be editioned. Some collectors like to have an artist's proof because they can be slightly different to the rest of the edition. You may also see SP - studio proof - which means something very similar to artist's proof. Generally when the prints are released the buyer should know how many editions and how many AP's and SP's are available.

If there are no editions numbers on your print that means it is an open edition - there can be any number of prints. These should be much cheaper than a limited edition print. Having said that, if your favourite artist is very popular, and their limited edition prints sell for big sums, you may find open editions are still quite pricey.

Get Collecting

So the world of prints is a rich one. Some are a wonderful way to enjoy art at a more accessible price point, some are bought for the skill involved in making them by hand. Sometimes they can be a stop gap until you are ready to invest in an original painting, sometimes, as with wood, lino and screen printing - they are themselves an original work you will marvell at and aim to keep forever. We love the world of print and we hope this guide has helped you understand it all a little better.

If you ever have any questions about the print world - we are always on hand to help.