ABOUT SILKSCREENS

Screenprinting is a variety of stencil printing. The basic concept involves the simple physical application of colour directly onto a surface. A gauze screen is fixed tautly on a rectangular frame. This screen is laid directly on top of a sheet of paper. Printing ink is spread over the upper side of the mesh and forced through it with a squeegee (a rubber blade) so that the ink is transferred through the screen to the paper on the other side. The image is built up colour by colour, each screen being a seperate colour. To achieve a full colour print, over thirty seperate screens are used.

The design is applied to the screen in various ways. A stencil of paper or plastic can be cut and attached to the underside of the screen. Areas of the screen can be painted out with a liquid that sets and blocks the holes in the mesh. An impervious design can be fixed photographically to the mesh.

The screen is usually made of silk and thus the process is often called ‘silk-screen printing’. However since the 60's the more durable nylon or metal mesh has replaced the use of silk in the screens. In the U.S.A. the process is often referred to as ‘serigraphy’, and the works produced as ‘serigraph prints’ or ‘serigraphs’.

A screenprint can often be distinguished from a lithograph (the process most similar to it) by the woven pattern of the screen, which is impressed into the surface of the ink, or by the heavy charge of ink that is transferred to the paper. The depth and richness of colour that can be achieved with the silkscreen printing process is unmatched, except in an original work.

Edition Size, Limited Editions
A printing of a group of prints from a single screen is called an edition. A limited edition is one in which the numbers of the print are decided beforehand, and then the edition size is limited to that number. Then the screen is destroyed or changed in some way so that only a limited number of prints are made of that image.
These limited edition prints are each numbered below the image. This takes the form of the number of each image in the order of its making, then separated by a slash, the number of the total edition. In this way, a number of 29/195, means the 29th image completed out of a total of 195 made. Part of the edition is also marked AP - Artist's Proof. Traditionally these were given to the artist as part payment for signing the edition and were 10% of the edition size. Due to there limited number and sometimes personal connection with the artist AP's are considered more collectable and normally carry a premium over the standard edition. AP numbers are marked using Roman numerals.

Certain collectors prefer lower, mid or higher numbers of the series; this is a personal preference. In general the smaller the total edition number, the rarer the prints and the higher the value. Thus a print from an edition of 99 should be more valuable, all other factors being equal, than a print from an edition size of 500.

History
The origins of screenprinting are found in various forms of stencil printing in China, Japan, Germany, France and England, but it was in America in the twentieth century that the form was significantly developed. In 1914 a multi screen process was developed in California and used during World War 1 by sign painters and decorators of flags, pennants and banners. By the 1930s the form had become very popular with artists. An important development in the 1960s was the use of photo stencils, which allow the artist to incorporate photographic images into the print. The most noteable artist to use this medium was Andy Warhol, who produced many of his icon portraits as silkscreens.