Printmaking

Prints fall roughly into four kinds by how they are printed. In relief printing the unwanted areas are cut away and the raised parts are inked; woodcut belongs here. In intaglio, lines are incised or bitten with acid into a metal plate, the surface ink is wiped off so only the ink in the grooves remains, and the plate is pressed onto paper; etching and copperplate belong here. Planographic printing relies on oil and water repelling each other: an ink-holding image is drawn on stone or metal, as in lithography. In stencil printing, ink is pushed through a mesh onto the paper, as in screen printing. The first three produce an image reversed from the matrix; stencil printing does not. Most modern printmakers print limited editions, signed in pencil below the image and numbered: 14/100 means the fourteenth of a hundred. In Taiwan, Liao Shiou-ping is called the father of modern Taiwanese printmaking; he is among the artists in the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts' The Edition Knows, which looks back on twenty years of collecting through its prints and treats printmaking as a technique of memory.

Check the technique on the label (woodcut, etching, lithograph, screen print), then look closely for the pencilled number and signature below the image.

What kind of matrix was this print made from? What in its lines or ink tells you?