Hokusai – The sign that becomes life

Original prints (silography, burin, drypoint, etching, aquatint, lithography, serigraphy, etc.) are to be considered proofs pulled in black and color from one or more plates conceived by the artist himself, whatever technique was used to make them. In the 20th century many of the traditional techniques have undergone variations due to the improvement of technology and the artists' desire to experiment with new forms of expression, so that in the original prints we encounter techniques with a photographic or heliographic basis, up to elaborations of images made with the aid of computers. These peculiarities are indicated in the technical sheets of the work. Japanese prints do not follow these rules: the artist would make a drawing on very thin paper, expressly for engraving this would be pasted upside down on the plate, which would then be engraved by the hori-cho (silograph), under the control of the artist. One plate was engraved for each color. Status is a voluntary change to the plate, while variant is an accidental change to the plate or refers to the quality or paper. The quality or beauty of the impression is independent of the state, preservation, rarity, subject, and author (a late proof of last state, if printed with care, may be of high quality; and it is understood that the quality is high or low within the same print run). The adjectives in international use to define quality are, in descending order: superb, splendid, magnificent, beautiful, fair, mediocre, tired, and poor. For modern and contemporary prints, when they are not proofs or undocumented runs but specimens belonging to a print run, in which the first specimen and the last have no difference in quality, these are referred to as "perfect specimens." For Japanese prints, color quality is indicated by the following adjectives in descending order: brilliant, excellent, good, fair, pale. The existence or non-existence of the signature is always mentioned. It should be remembered, however, that this, is of no use either in the certification of authenticity or in attribution. So the attribution of a print to an author, unlike that of a drawing or painting, being imprinted in several copies can be considered, published work and therefore of certain author and documented. For antique and Japanese prints, it is difficult to speak of a print run since they were generally printed according to demand. In addition to the two major divisions, coeval and late, prints were printed at different times according to demand. A current edition means a large print run, sometimes over a thousand copies, desired by the author and publisher, often as an out-of-text table in books or art magazines. Not are to be considered artistically minor works; many have had a parallel luxury edition. Rarity is due either to the few impressions made, or to the law of supply-demand, and still the quality of preservation is indicated by the following phrases in descending order: in exceptional state of preservation, in perfect state of preservation (except...), in good state of preservation (except...). Margins are classified as follows: very thin up to 1 mm, thin from 1 to 2 mm, small from 2 to 4 mm.good from 4 to 15 mm, wide over 15 mm, intact is a sheet that retains the measurements in which it was made or printed, with editorial meaning a sheet that has been marketed without margins or with a precise paper size chosen by the artist in consultation with the publisher. The measurements are all in millimeters, height to base, refer for cable prints (etchings, burins,...) to the copperplate impression, for silographs to the marginal line and, in the absence of these, to the sheet, for lithographs and serigraphs refer to the image and not to the sheet. Sometimes catalogs raisonné report slightly different measurements, this may depend on the measuring criteria or the elasticity of the paper which, depending on the temperature/humidity of the environments in which it was stored or the pressure of the press, shrinks or widens. The authenticity of the original prints and their correspondence to the characteristics described in our "declaration of authenticity" will be issued upon purchase of each work.