Judging the Authenticity of Prints by The Masters:
by David Rudd Cycleback

Chapter 6 : What is a Print?

(c) cycleback 2003, 2005 all rights reserved

By tradition, printing is the making of an image in ink by pressing an inked printing plate (steel plate, block of wood, other) onto paper or other material. The paper or other material instead can be pressed against the printing plate. The printing surface (the surface of the printing plate where the ink is placed) must be in a form that can print the same image many times. The resulting image on paper or other material is a print. An example of printing that most of us have had experience with is the rubber stamp. I own one that prints my mailing address on envelopes and documents. The printing surface of a rubber stamp is in a shape that it can print the image over and over, as long as there's enough ink in the inkpad. There have been hundreds of different kinds of printing processes. Some are ancient and hand made, some use the latest computer technology. With the change in technology, the definition of printing has been bent. Some modern printing processes don't use printing plates, at least not in the traditional sense. Screen printing, known as silk screen in the United States, involves the forcing of ink thought a screen. Inkjet computer printers squirt ink onto the paper. Some computer printers don't even use ink. While these and other processes don't follow the rules of tradition, they can be considered prints in a broader sense. Yale Art Historian Gabor Paturdi put it well when he the wrote, "Because these (non traditional) processes represent an important development that may ultimately replace the other processes, printing should probably now be defined as any of several techniques for reproducing texts and illustrations, in black and in color, on a durable surface and in a desired number of identical copies." What is not a print? Related things that are not prints include paintings, drawings and photographs. In painting and drawing there is no printing plate that can be used to make multiple images. The image is created directly on the paper, canvas or other by hand. A painting or drawing is by nature unique. In ways, photographic prints are similar to prints. In photography, a negative (a transparent sheet of glass, plastic or other material with the photographic image in negative on the surface) is made by the photographer and this negative can be used to 'print' many photographs. Photography does not use ink. A photographic image is created by the interaction of chemically treated paper and light. Amongst collectors and historians, photography is considered a different genre than ink and printing press inks. Most collectors, dealers and historians make a clear distinction between prints and photographs. cycleback.com................conceits main (c) david rudd cycleback, cyclback.com all rights reserved

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