Giclee

A Brief History of Fine Art Reproduction

Fine art printing has rapidly changed in the past 20 years. Let's go back in time and find out what happened. Prior to giclee printmaking lithography had the lion's share for fine art reproduction. Lithography was invented in Germany in 1789. Initially the plates were made using a relief method. Subsequently offset systems were invented and are still in use today. Plates have metal layers which are etched using acids. The initial costs of producing the plates are high. On the positive side, savings increase as the amount of prints made goes up. Typically offset is done with 4 inks: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Because of the limited amount of inks used and the nature of these dyes, the color gamut is fairly limited: it is not possible to reproduce many bright color normally found in original art work.

The Giclée Printing Method

Let' s take a leap with the introduction of fine art printing using the giclée method. Towards the end of the 1980s Iris Graphics introduced the Iris printing system to proof commercial pre-press before going to plate. Nash Editions in California saw the new machines potential to be more than proofing devices. The company is arguably the pioneer in creating a market for the giclée print reproduction market. When working in Los Angeles, we acquired the Iris 3047 in the early 1990s and immediately found a receptive market. This printer, although very good at fine art reproduction, was extremely prone to clogged nozzles and required constant maintenance. Furthermore, it took some time before archival inks would come out. As the competition took notice of the possibilities of selling large format high end giclee fine art printing systems, research was accelerated and companies such as HP, Epson, Mimaki and Roland. Because of the large cash available to these corporations and the pool of talent they could attract, a new breed of printers has come out, largely surpassing in our opinion the now defunct IRIS. IRIS printer technology is still being produced although not by the original manufacturer. The cost of a giclée printer as well the price of pigments and papers, is the reason why fine art reproductions using this method are expensive to produce. Also, because of the resolutions these printers have, it takes a lot of time to make the giclée. The new machines took the leap of beating the art printing color rendition limitations of 4 colors and added 2, 3 and sometimes even 8 to the mix. The results are stunning and no description does justice other than seeing a giclée print!

The Future of Giclée

With the tremendous leap in technology with the introduction of giclée printers about 20 years ago, a question comes naturally: what is next? This medium is definitely here to stay. After many decades of traditional offset printing, high quality digital printers have created a revolution in limited edition output. What we can expect is an improvement in speed and color range of giclée printers. The quality is already here and the last 10 years have seen prices of hardware and number of giclée printer offers changing for the best. It is unlikely and not in the near future that there is going to be a quantum leap in printing technology as it has now occurred.