Limited Edition Prints

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The terms limited edition, and variants such as deluxe edition, collector's edition or expanded edition, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints, video games or recorded music and films.  Now a days these terms are including cars, fine wine, and whisky, among other products.

 

Limited edition prints, also known as LEs, have been standard in printmaking from the nineteenth century onwards. A limit to the print run is crucial, as many traditional printmaking techniques can only produce a limited number of best quality impressions. A limited edition is restricted in the number of copies produced, although in fact the number may be very low or very high. 

 

This can be as few as ten or twenty for a technique like drypoint, but more commonly would be in the low hundreds. The print runs of over a thousand are regarded as dubious by the serious art market for original prints, even though with many techniques there is no loss of quality.

 

As in other fields, the use of the concept has become largely driven by marketing imperatives, and has been misused in parts of the market. In particular, lithographic, photogravure, rotogravure, and giclee reproductions of prints, derived from photographs of an original print, which are most unlikely to have any investment value, are often issued in limited editions implying that they will have such value.

 

These need to be distinguished from the original artist's print, carefully produced directly from his work, and printed under the artist's supervision.

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Many great European artists, such as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, and Francisco Goya, were dedicated printmakers. In their own day, their international reputations largely came from their prints, which were spread far more widely than their paintings.  Influences between artists were also mainly transmitted beyond a single city by prints, for the same reason. Today, thanks to colour photo reproductions, and public galleries, their paintings are much better known, whilst their prints are only rarely exhibited, for conservation reasons.

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This is my limited edition printing experinece with  " Theo #14 "  came to life......

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" Theo 14 for Fort Mac -2016 "  is a limited edition print based from an original 22” x 28” acrylic paint on paper painting of Theo when he played for the Calgary Flames.  The original painting is owned by Theo.

 

The link and a story on how the piece and prints all came about can be viewed here http://versikaitis.wix.com/joe-versikaitis#!theo-fleury/wlf9d

 

The process takes place at a printing shop where they use a 4 colour press ( C.M.Y.K.) Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (K), white being the paper.

To get the colours the printers create what is called a colour separation process. Where they take an image of the painting then using a computer they would split the image into the 4 colour filters.

 

The computer would then creates an image of the CMYK filters which were transferred to a mylar film. This mylar was then put on top of the aluminum plates which had a coating painted on them. The 2 pieces were put into a machine that would, through light processing, would burn that image on the aluminum plate. Once the coating had been washed off a mirror image ( backwards)  would appear on the plate. 

 

They would wrap the plates on the press drums and add the appropriate colour to that press reservoir. One press prints out Cyan on the paper and then the paper goes through to the other press which prints out Magenta and then goes to the rest of colours with Black being the last.

 

The printer and myself then decided how many prints we are going to make and the pressman would calculate how much ink to use. 

 

When we start the printing process, we can go through a few pieces of paper, 10 to 20, before we get the correct colour or image that matches the original painting. I had the original there as the prints were being made to compare the prints. Once we decided that we had the correct mixtures of ink we started the printing  process or run. After that, we had a bit more ink left over and continued printing 60 more prints ( Over runs ). Thats where we stopped.

 

After the prints were made back on December 9, 1996 Theo Fleury, Garth Hordenchuk - Owner of The Paper - Brooks, Alberta, my wife and our two kids, and myself sat in a room at Sundog printing - Calgary and signed 214 limited edition prints with 14 artist proofs. It took us three and half hours of straight signing. Read Garth Hordenchuk here " Theo 14 ".

 

From those 60 over runs prints I picked out the best ones and created 14 Artist Proofs  ( Theo’s jersey number) these were similar to a collectors edition. Now the way the art market goes,  Artist Proofs are worth more than the original run. Again because of the small amount of prints and they were hand picked by the artist. 

 

From these 46 left over prints I picked out 30 of the best ones and Theo and I signed those. I drew the fireman’s helmet on it and numbered them .  Again as the art market goes, because I added original material or re-touching the print ( pencil drawing of the Firemans helmet ) to the print this adds extra value to it.  We created " Theo 14 for Fort Mac - 2016 " a run of 30 special prints.

 

 The more prints you create the less the value. So when artist create thousands of prints the value decreases. There is a famous wildlife artist whoran into issues when his publishers created limited edition prints of his work in the tens of thousands. This decreased the value of his print work so much that his prints were well.. dubious!

 

This is why we created a 30 print edition which means there isn’t many around and this will give " Theo 14 for Fort Mac - 2016 " more value. In saying that,  Number one will always hold more value than number 2 and so on. But number 30 it’s the last one but it holds the same amount of value as number one..LOL  

Market talk..Of course print number 14 will be worth a lot more than any of its counterpart to the right collector….

 

Thats why people who bid on these prints look at what the number is, who the artist is and what is the subject. The subject, is a painting and print endorsed by NHLer, Stanley Cup and Olympic Gold medal winner, and…Author of 4 books - Theo Fleury. These and along with his signature is what gives the prints their value. 

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A little bit too much info probably but thats basically how these are made. There is a huge difference between a photo and a limited edition print based from an original painting rendered by an artist. The artist, the subject and the story on the painting adding the story of the printing process is what gives limited edition prints true value to a collector.

 

Now a days, re productions of art work is being printed on canvas which give the image extra value because canvas will last longer than paper.