Collecting & printing
What a fine-art print is, how it is made, what to ask, how to care for it.
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How a fine-art print is made: from a 1714 plate to your wall
Where the scan comes from, what restoration does and does not touch, why some plates stop at 16 × 24, and how to check the print that arrives.
15 min readHow we restore a 200-year-old plate, step by step
Eustachi's 1714 heart plate, from a harsh bitonal library scan to the Wellcome Collection's continuous-tone page: re-centred, cropped, rotated, and never repainted.
8 min read
Print sizes and ratios explained: 2:3, 3:4 and 4:3
Four size ladders and twelve sizes, in inches and centimetres; why a painting keeps its own ratio; and what 'largest size 16 × 24' on a product page really means.
7 min read
What is a giclée print, and is it worth it?
A marketing word from 1991 for a pigment inkjet print on archival paper. The word guarantees nothing; the ink, paper and scan do.
6 min read