Collecting Prints | An Original Print
This term might seem like an oxymoron, prints by their very nature can be produced in multiples so how can you define an original print? To answer this, I’m relying on the words of Helen Rosslyn, the Director of the London Original Print Fair who explains that “an original print is an image conceived by an artist to be created on one surface and transferred onto another thereby enabling the production of more than one final image. The original work of art is the print itself…rather than the block or plate from which it is printed”.
This definition makes the umbrella of the “original print” nice and broad. It also shows that there is more of a focus on intention than on the use of a specific process over another. A digital print could indeed be considered an original print if it has been initially conceived of by the artist as a print. We’ll go into more details about all the different print techniques that form the universe of the original print in our next Collecting Prints post but hopefully this is a helpful primer when considering what constitutes a print and more specifically a collectable print.
Kelly Walker
Pioneer PL-518 Inch Series G1, 2015
pantone and four-color process silkscreen on MDF
28 panels each: 24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm) overall: 102 x 180 in. (259.1 x 457.2 cm)
