Borges - A 50-Year-Old First Edition

A 50-Year-Old First Edition
Printmaker and World Printmakers co-founder, Maureen Booth, received a phone call in the month of June from Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. It was the first contact for a unique commission which Maureen has just finished and delivered. The call was from Berto Concepción, the owner of the La Hornera Creative Workshop in La Laguna and one of Maureen's oldest clients. Berto had been approached by the owner of a singular set of etching plates about the possibility of editioning them. Considering the quality of the images, the unique conditions of the plates and the high standards of the client, Berto decided to phone Maureen.

Maureen and her assistant, Rodrigo, hang
up the last of the more than 1,000 prints.

The plates, which were produced in the 1950's, but were never editioned, were the work of Francisco Borges Salas, a Spanish artist who died in 1994. Maureen suggested that Berto send them to her studio in Granada, or better yet bring them personally so as they could pull some proofs together and see what the results looked like. A few days later Berto showed up at Maureen's studio.

"As it turned out," says Maureen, "the plates were marvelous works of art in excellent condition and certainly worthy of spending some time and money and fine paper editioning them. And I was fascinated by the fact that they had been shelved for 50 years without ever being editioned. It was like finding a Rembrandt in the attic.

"Having said that, the client wanted editions of 75 of the 12 plates, plus 8 artist's proofs of each, plus some H/C's, along with the usual color proofs which adds up altogether to more than 1,000 prints, which is a lot of prints, especially in the months of July and August in Granada when daytime temperatures don't drop much below 40ºC! I wouldn't have undertaken the job without a capable assistant, actually two in this case, as when Pablo became ill halfway through the work, Rodrigo took over. They are both excellent helpers and we there was no problem switching from one to the other in mid stream."

Plates Posed Technical Challenges
Though the quality of engraving on the plates was excellent, incorporating very skillful line work and well-bitten aquatint, the plates presented some technical problems that Maureen hadn't encountered before. "We started out making a lot of proofs, both to see what quality the plates were capable of delivering and for choosing a suitable color," she says, "and it's a good thing we did. For some reason, the more proofs we pulled, the better they looked. It turned out that the images were improving due to the repeated cleaning of the plates, which were encrusted with 50-year-old dried ink. It didn't come out of the grooves with the first cleaning nor the second, nor the third. It seemed to me that the fresh ink, pressed into the lines on successive printings also helped to soften the old dried ink and to pull it out."

"Some of the plates were less crisp than others, but the best ones were absolutely brilliant. The San Lazaro print is, it seems to me, virtually a master class in etching technique, in which Borges achieved a full range of tones from black to pure white, passing through a dozen greys without using any aquatint. It's all line work, which also makes it a joy to print. The San Sebastian print is also marvelous. Besides the wonderful drawing, it's beautifully etched. I am also very fond of the unfinished portrait of Christopher Columbus. It love the feeling of intimacy one gets from a work in progress."

"In the end the job was less burdensome than I'd expected," says Maureen. "The secret is to have cheerful, reliable assistants, to start work early in the morning and to have good music in the studio. I expected to take a month and a half or two to finish the job, but all went well and we knocked it out in one month of 6-8-hour days. Part of this was thanks to an idea Berto had to put two plates through the press at once."

A large airy studio and dry summer
weather is a big help when it comes
to printing up a thousand prints.

A Coincidental Bit of History
During the printing Maureen was informed that her cherished maestro, José García de Lomas was hospitalized, and she went to pay him a visit. Pepe Lomas is a well-loved institution in Granada, having taught etching to two and a half generations of printmakers, thus contributing to the consolidation of this city as a reference in contemporary Spanish printmaking.

In the course of their conversation Maureen told Pepe about the curious printing commission she was working on and how marvelous the prints were. After she had described a couple of the images, Pepe paused for a moment, then exclaimed, "I remember those plates, and I know the artist! He came to the Rodríguez-Acosta Foundation when I was running the print workshop there, it must have been around 1973, to discuss the possibility of us doing an edition for him. As I remember, they couldn't reach an agreement on price and he picked up his plates and took them back to Tenerife. That was the last I heard of them. It's remarkable that they should find their way back to Granada 25 years later.

One thing is making your own etchings,
quite another doing production printing,
according to Maureen. Quality control
becomes a critical issue.

Borges, The Artist & his Work