Editioning Crash Course
/Editioning prints is not for the faint of heart! Standards vary dramatically by where you learned, when you learned, who you learned for, and which things you learned along the way resonated with you or didn’t resonate with you at all. There are very few one-size-fits-all answers about editioning your prints, which means it can be a really hard thing to get satisfactory answers about quickly.
We figured it would be helpful to clarify some of the vocabulary surrounding editioned work in the print universe and offer a quick and practical style guide to editioning the way we do it here. Please remember that this is not meant to be an exhaustive review. This is just meant to guide you through some of the practical basics!
Miami P&Pr Editioning Crash Course
Key Terms
Edition (noun) Tate Art Terms states that “It refers to a series of identical impressions or prints made from the same printing surface, but can also be applied to series of other media such as sculpture, photography and video.” In the case of work being made in conversation with print/book/paper world, works which are a part of an edition are typically visually indistinguishable from one another — nearly identical to the trained naked eye.
If you are planning to produce an edition of, for example, 50 screen prints on paper, you are planning to produce 50 screenprints of the same design, using the same process and colors, on the same type of paper, with no obvious variation caused by errors in printing or decisions made to change directions while printing the edition.
Varied Edition/Variable Edition (noun) A varied edition offers you a little more wiggle room. In a varied edition, there will still be some very clear repeated elements, but instead of aiming for a stack of identical prints, an artist embarking upon producing a varied edition is often interested in a more iterative process. Arsty tells us “That could mean that [the works which compose a varied edition] are on different surfaces, are made of different materials, are colored differently, or use slightly different techniques.”
Ultimately, the works in a varied edition have more commonalities than differences. In a printed varied edition, the most common variations tend to be things like changing the ink color, hand-applying ink (monoprint inking) on the fly, and printing on different paper colors or various found materials. Usually, this would still involve printing from the same matrix or the same process.
For example, a varied edition of 50 could be:
Screenprinting the same image onto 50 different cereal boxes that you had collected over time
Hand-coloring 50 identical drypoint prints with watercolor paint after they’re printed
Printing one carved linoleum block 50 times, and varying the ink color and placement on the paper throughout the edition
Throwing 50 rotten tomatoes at 50 sheets of paper
Editioning (verb): In the print universe, the verb form of the word “edition” is usually used to describe the task of numbering, titling, and signing the edition, as well as “curating” it (doing any final clean-up/touch up work.) Artworks which are a part of an edition typically include edition information somewhere on them or with them. Depending on which medium the work is made in closest conversation with, the editioning norms will vary a good amount. Within each medium-specific set of editioning norms, there will often be additional variations usually relating to where an artist is printing or who they learned from.
Where do I sign?
Where you place your edition information is going to be determined mostly by how your work it laid out. These two prints were produced for the Under the Sun portfolio exchange.
Left: 23023 by Christian Feneck, Right: Plait Platz by Sammi McLean
The print on the left is a bleed print, meaning that the image goes all the way to the edge of the paper. The artist, Christian Feneck, consequently elected to sign his prints on the back (“en verso.”) He could alternatively have chosen to sign and edition his work on the front, finding an unobtrusive place to sign within the printed image area. Some artists sign and edition within their printed images in more inventive/obtrusive ways, and we aren’t opposed to that, if it’s what’s really best for a particular work or artist. Be warned, though: Adventurous editioning can be polarizing among print people.
The way the print on the right is signed and editioned is fairly standard for prints with blank margins surrounding the printed area. Although there are blind debossed elements all the way to the edge of the sheet, the artist, Sammi McLean, elected to sign her work on the front.
How exactly do I edition it?
Here at Miami Paper & Printing Museum, our standard layout for edition information is exactly what we see in McLean’s print:
Bottom Left: Edition number (ex. “1/50”)
Center: Title (This is optional! You could leave it blank.)
Bottom Right: Signature (and year, if desired. Year is also optional.)
The numbers: Edition vs. Varied Edition
Okay, so lets say you have promised to produce an edition of 50 prints. You have to produce 50 prints that look all alike, edition them, and then submit prints 1/50 through 50/50 to whoever it is that you owe that edition to.
The first print in an edition of 50 would be labeled in the bottom left corner like so: 1/50
The second print would be “2/50”, the fourteenth print would be “14/50” and so on.
What you need:
Sharp graphite pencil: Graphite is an archival material and very difficult to imitate, visually. Many inks are not archival, which means they could damage your print or other materials over time just by touching them, and pen marks are easier to imitate than pencil.
Your completed edition or varied edition
Clean, dry hands
How to actually edition your prints:
In this example, I am adding all of the edition information to this edition of five prints. I gathered my prints together into a neat little stack, with print 1 on top, and print 5 (the last print in my edition) on the bottom. I spaced my stack of prints out enough to expose the blank area I want to write my edition information in. Stacking them like this while I add the edition info means it will be much easier to ensure the information lands in the same approximate place on each print.
Editioning a varied edition:
We often represent varied editions on our prints by putting the letters “V.E.” in front of the edition numbering. Print 3 in a varied edition of 5 would be numbered in the bottom left as “V.E. 3/5" as you can see in the image below.
Here’s a quick YouTube video walking you through editioning prints, in case you need to see it in motion!
Proofs: One to keep for yourself and how to label it
For lots of reasons that have to do with the conventional print shop processes that lead to fine art print editions (that’s a story for another day), it is also very common for artists to produce proofs in addition to their numbered edition.
A print that is made for the artist to keep for themselves is often called an Artist Proof, and is often labeled as “A.P.” in the bottom left corner where the edition number will go on all the prints in the actual edition. The Artist Proof is NOT one of the 50 prints in the edition. An edition of 50 prints with one Artist Proof would amount to 51 prints total, and the artist would keep the Artist Proof for themselves, and then sell/give away/consign/whatever they want to do with the edition of 50 prints. There are some guidelines for how many Artists Proofs and Printers Proofs it’s considered appropriate to produce, but these vary a bit and are complicated. There are other kinds of proofs and labels, too, but that’s also a topic for another day.
