I recall many years back to my childhood in my Mother’s studio, where she would always have these massive projects underway! I always knew what she was doing and how the process was being managed, however it wasn’t until I was a bit older that I began to truly understand it all. What she taught me was a few of the very founding techniques for limited edition printmaking. She would often have huge warehouses filled to the edges with drying screens an endless sea of large printed serigraphs and stone lithographs. Both were the first types of reproduction methods utilized by every artist of our age and much before our time as well; prior to the advent of the giclee better known as inkjet printing.
Often in each scenario, my Mother would begin the process with 500 fresh sheets of durable print medium, often paper. In each scenario, she began with so many that she knew mistakes would occur and thereby ruin one of the 500 she began with! After arduous trials and painstaking yet manually intensive efforts were made over months of time, finally an edition was born! Sometimes well over a hundred or more of these attempts would be destroyed in the course of making an edition, often resulting in the end edition being limited to only 295 image. I can vividly remember all of this when I was a boy and fast forwarding it all to the present time, I truly understand the effort and love that went into creating a Limited-Edition Fine Artwork.
With respect to reproduction methods the idea was that an original artwork could only be in one home and scarcity was such that only so many works could ever be created in an artist’s lifetime. However, with the advent of these techniques, many more duplicate artworks could be created and thereby began the onset of our Limited-Edition Fine Art culture. Some could argue that Limited Edition Fine Art roots began well before this time and I do agree, however for the sake of this story and my own life experience, I begin here.
Stone lithographs were the first form of printmaking technology that predates all the way back to the early 1800’s. Then in the early 1900’s serigraphy was invented as a new means of creating a reproduction. Each of these methods were desired in only small numbers as scarcity of the artists print drove home the term “Limited Edition”. There are so many limiting factors that come to mind when creating either type of print however, one thing distinctly pops out as the elephant in the room! These first types of reproduction methods took up an insanely large amount of space! It wasn’t out of the question to need a large warehouse only to print one edition for one print for one artist! The idea of creating hundreds of editions for hundreds of other artists was simply out of the question until advancements in technology gave birth to faster drying agents and more streamlined workflows.
CREATING YOUR PRINT from Marlon Holden Fine Art on Vimeo.
One of many facts about both technologies to be noted is that these technologies utilized actual stone and or actual silk screens. Each method is extremely painstaking, many errors occurred, and they are incredibly manual in nature to create. Also, to be noted is that the stone will often wear down after hundreds of passes, just like the stone, a silk screen also will wear after hundreds of passes resulting in poorer image quality the more each image is reproduced. The reason for this is that the more attempts that you imprinted a stone lithograph, the more that quality would suffer, and that print would not offer the same crisp features as the original. The same can be said for a serigraph, where each pass across a silk screen in fact wore down the screen and made each consecutive pass, less and less like the original.
This early technology while great, had its flaws. It was fairly common practice to limit these to an edition of around 295 to 395 images, as creating many more could sometimes create inconsistent results in both the screens or the stone and anything greater in number was simply too much to see a clean, crisp and consistent reproduction. As such, the limitations imposed upon reproductions early on were in large part greatly dictated to the quality of the print and the smallest numbers were the most desired as they were the most crisp and beautifully created images of the edition, with editions called Artist Proofs and Printers Proofs being even more coveted since they often came before the actual edition itself.
Fast forward to our reality in the digital era, where the first reproduction can be just as crisp as the thousandth reproduction. There is very little if anything at all that anyone can do to distinguish one reproduction from another. Within this lay the ability for us to call upon what our predecessors have done for all of us and continue to pay tribute to our past. As an artist who prides myself on exemplary works in Fine Art Photography, what I have done is held fast to certain distinguishing characteristics within Fine Art history and to a great degree what my Mother has taught me. She is a classically trained American Master of the arts and she also earned her master’s degree in fine art along with an endless list of high-profile Fine Art collectors, awards and accolades from around the world. I have always felt in my heart that she was a great place to begin with regard to what I wish to uphold by virtue within my work as she has been a cornerstone of where many of my own personal philosophies around Fine Art have developed.
The reality for all of us is that Limited Edition Fine Art reproductions are scarce in nature, yet collectors benefit from this by having a much greater access to the artwork. It is my opinion that every artist should have Original artworks within their collections for the most discerning of collectors who absolutely require that the works they acquire are exclusive only to them. However, it is important to think about this for a moment; When you buy Limited Edition Fine Art, you are collecting a valuable work of art, with less initial investment. This allows you to acquire beautiful artworks for your home while keeping in mind that you aren’t having to pay the price of an Original work which would be a significantly higher initial investment.
To that end, I along with many others have adopted strict criteria within our Limited-Edition Fine Art works. One distinction that should be made within anyone’s body of artwork is the fact that scarcity should still be a very high priority to all of us as artists in order to ensure that our collectors have one of very few and not one of many. Keeping editions low ensures that you are preserving your legacy and your good name. It also ensures that when you release a new Limited Edition that your work is by nature in and of itself a scarce and hard to come by artwork. With attention to detail, a lot of luck and hard work, you will one day be rewarded for your efforts in the form of happy and loyal Limited-Edition Fine Art collectors of your own.