In the mid nineties, when I was between colleges and decent jobs, I spent a lot of time traveling between my home and my grandmothers home four hours to the south.
My grandmother had passed away earlier that year. We were cleaning out her house, making repairs and preparing to sell the home my grandparents had lived in for 30 years. At a certain point in this process there is a lot of waiting around and looking for an interesting way to spent the afternoon.
In the heat of the central California summer, one aunt wanted to take us to an air-conditioned Italian restaurant she loved, then browse antique stores and thrift shops for an hour or two looking for treasures - a favorite pastime for both aunts. I had no money to buy and no place of my own to decorate, but I was the groups driver and I took them wherever they asked.
I found a way to entertain myself at these stores looking through the art and playing a game of ‘I could paint better than this’ or thinking about how I would have made a piece of art differently. Most of the work was painted or crafted by someone else’s grandparent, the type of person who like to dabble or take a class on a new technique. The rest of it was overly produced, sometimes famous work that was made by a distant artist and printed by the 1000’s - the Mona Lisa - on a thin canvas with a plastic frame. Very rarely did I see an original piece by someone who had studied and practiced their craft.
The second place we went into in this row of antique stores had a more interesting collection. The furniture were real antiques. Not just old couches or dressers. Beautiful cabinets, hand carved with detail in the joints and prices to match. More interesting to me however was the original art - much of it over priced. Tucked under one of those antiques, I found a bin of prints. Most of them were mass produced, but there was a handful of originals.
I had seen and made enough work to be able to tell the difference between a offset lithography and a hand-printed linoleum or woodcut. You could see the difference in the way the ink laid flat or rose above the surface. You could see the difference in the paper used to make the work. Even a poor student or a broke artist who was struggling used quality paper that would last. Some of the papers on the mass produced work were beginning to yellow, the inks were fading. The original prints stood out.
Original art shines. You can almost feel the hand of the artist, the way he turns a brush to create a line or the pressure from his hand as he dug a carving tool into wood or linoleum. Flipping through the bin one print jumped out at me. A linoleum-block printed in rich solid black ink on soft luxurious velum paper, taped - with yellowed clear tape - to a cardboard backing and wrapped in a plastic cover with a pricing sticker in the corner -$18.
I did not have $18. I was in town to help on a family project. A jobless student in the middle of summer break. I stared at the print. Timing was on my side. I was holding it, taking in the beauty when my aunt walked around the corner. She could see I loved it right away. We took it out of the plastic to get a better look, something I would not have thought to do on my own. I would have expected to get in to trouble for that.
The image glowed. She bought it for me.
South Sea Trader - Tahiti
This print showed a sailing vessel full of people. The sail laid out flat, not to move the boat but to cover her passengers. One man still loading goods, while a woman waited under a tree with a bag at her feet. The people in the boat were relaxed. It was tied to a stump on the shore. The water was calm and palms dangled from the tops of the trees in the foreground. Way in the back, sharp mountains - volcanos, maybe? - rose out of the landscape lit from behind.
Multiple editions?
My print was titled “South Sea Trader - Tahiti,” editioned and signed by the artist - Charles Surendorf. This print exists under at least one other name - “The Mitiars at Moorea, Tahiti” listed as edition/100 and signed with the artists name and location, Charles Surendorf - Tahiti. “The Mitiars at Moorea, Tahiti” is currently available at the James Main Fine Art Gallery in Santa Barbara, California.
How editioning should work vs. how it often works.
There is a way artists are taught to edition their work. This helps the art consumer and art seller to know what they are getting. An artist may do a proof print, to see that they are happy with the image. These prints - often called Artist Proofs - should be editioned as proof of A.P. 1/1 or 1 of 1. Meaning there is 1 print that looks like this. If they do several proofs numbers are adjusted (1/4,1 of 4, etc.) If they make changes after the first proof or several proofs that should be noted as a state (A.P. 1/10, second state).
Once the image is ready, it should be that all prints are made in one or two printing sessions. When dry, prints are sorted and the most perfect are included in the edition. The threshold for what one considers a perfect print varies greatly by the artist. The prints are then titled, signed and numbered. This may mean printing forty and making an edition of, say 32 prints. The extras may be numbered as artist proofs or destroyed.
A skilled artist can make a larger edition. Depending on the way an image is printed and the material used for the printing matrix or block (linoleum, wood or something else) one may get 50 to a few hundred prints.
Differences in ink color or type should be noted, as should differences in type of paper used. What is unusual here is that the artist used different papers, two separate titles, and signed his name differently. This leads a fellow artist and collector to wonder why. It is known the Surendorf actually travelled to Tahiti and did some of this series there and that he returned to California and continued to make art. A good guess is that he sold a few prints while traveling and signed, named and numbered them at the time of the sale.
For this print to have two names and for both to be numbered as editions of 100 seems odd. A lower number in an edition often brings a higher price. What is more likely is that the artist printed only a few of each and set a high edition in order to keep his options for printing more open. Or perhaps he changed the name after selling a few - easier to do when you number as you go. It is possible that both titles - and any others that exist for this image - are all part of the same edition.
Fun Fact: Once an artist is done printing an image the matrix or block should be altered so that no one can use it to print more images and sell them as originals. This is often done by cutting a line across the image or cutting the corner off of the block, but does not always happen.
This is more important when the artist has achieved a level of fame and his work sells for a substantial amount. For example, I have a print by Salvador Dali, likely printed after his death. The image is definitely his work, but considering the price I paid for it not likely printed by him.
Fun Fact #2: Not all artists print their own work. An Artist whose main focus is not printmaking, maybe invited to work on images at a printing studio where professional printers print what ever image the artist create. Maybe a story for another time.
Charles Surendorf (American, 1906-1979)
The Mitiars at Moorea, Tahiti
Linocut on tissue thin wove paper, 6 x 8 inches, from the edition of 100, signed, titled and numbered in pencil, good impression and condition.Currently at the James Main Fine Art Gallery in Santa Barbara, California.
Charles Surendorf