Exquisite, Intriguing and Economical
"Fine-art prints" sound like something the rich indulge in when they're not yachting or playing polo. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Prints are not only the most exquisite and intriguing form of original art, but they're also the most economical.

The serial-art techniques, etching and engraving, screen printing and stone lithography, and now digital prints, are traditionally presented in signed-and-numbered limited editions. This marketing of "multiple originals" permits artists and galleries to keep prices well below those of unique original works such as oil paintings or watercolors. Does this mean that any work which is signed and numbered is a fine-art print? Well, actually no, and there are a lot of signed-and-numbered posters and reproductions out there on the market posing as original fine-art prints. How does one tell the difference?

Sticky Questions and Print Culture
It's to provide the answers to sticky questions like this one that the World Printmakers website was created. Though there are lots of virtual galleries on Internet which will sell you fine and not-so-fine-art prints, not many of them explain clearly just what you're buying. And there's a lot you should know. There's a rich print culture dating back more than 500 years which has come down to us from artists like Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Goya and Picasso. Printmaking has its own techniques, its own terminology, conventions, and secrets. Fine-art prints can be marvels of artistic expression and creativity, wonders of technique and a source of unending fascination and satisfaction. But anyone who is going to start collecting them might do well to find out something about these matters before they start buying.

Print Issues, Hanky Panky
At least that's what Mike Booth thought. Booth, an American expatriate editor and journalist resident in Spain since the late 1960's says, "I was aware for a long time of the issues which printmakers and collectors faced, because my wife is a printmaker, but I didn't see them being addressed anywhere. It seemed to me virtually impossible to come to grips with a phenomenon which was not only spread out all across the world but also fraught with problems of fraud, misrepresentation and other forms of art-biz hanky panky.

"Then along came the Internet," says Booth, "and suddenly everything seemed possible. There was no single good resource on the Web providing not only gallery space but also services and feedback to the communities of both printmakers and collectors worldwide. 'Worldwide' because printmaking is a global phenomenon with its own special flavours in different countries around the world, from austerely-beautiful Japanese woodcuts to the colorful and fanciful work of native Australians to the intricately-engraved drypoints of the Eastern Europeans and back to the emerging digital-print culture of the United States. Someone, it seemed, should provide an online showcase for this rich mosaic of international fine-art prints."

Filling the Fine-Art Print Information Gap
After a trial run (http://www.spanishprintmakers.com), Booth launched the World Printmakers ("Contemporary Graphic Work from Round the Globe") site (http://www.worldprintmakers.com) in June of 2000 and never looked back. He quickly found his suspicions confirmed: there are lots of people out there interested in contemporary fine-art prints, and they're starved for all kinds of print-related information. WorldPrintmakers.com today features the selected work of more than 100 printmakers from some 30 countries. As well as providing them with virtual gallery space, World Printmakers is also one of the Web's most important resource centers on contemporary print issues with feature stories, technical articles, historical material, profiles of workshops, as well as interviews with artists.

Do you need to know what information you should look for on a print's "Certificate of Authenticity?" You can find that on the World Printmakers site, too, along with articles on print nomenclature and abbreviations (those cryptic annotations you find at the bottom of a print). Would you like to find out how not to be duped when buying a fine-art print? That information is there, too. Do you need a periodic fix of printmaking news and information? World Printmakers will be happy to send you their monthly newsletter.

"As I see it," says Booth, "the fine-art print is to visual art what the string quartet is to music: the distilled essence of the very best of the art. And it's there to be enjoyed by anyone who bothers to show an interest. The rewards for expressing that interest are great in both cases."

An Art Site with a Mission
Information on the World Printmakers site is clearly and intuitively presented within a no-nonsense design concept: an elegant black background and plain vanilla text links. "We think the black background highlights the work nicely and that the text links are clearer and faster," says Booth. Most of the material on the site is organized into two categories, "Services for Artists" and "Services for Collectors." "That's in keeping with our mission statement," says Booth: "To provide a specialist space where printmakers from all countries can show their work to its best advantage and offer it for sale to a worldwide audience. To provide efficient, honest and trustworthy services to print collectors. And to become, with time, the 'site of record' in the printmaking world."

World Printmakers takes no commissions on sales made by the printmakers on the site. Buyers deal directly with the artists themselves.

Note to editors: We have not included any illustrations with this article, so as to minimize download time. If you do decide to publish it, however and would like to use some illustrations, we have made them available for you on our website in 300 dpi, six-inch-wide .jpg's. You can access them at: http://www.worldprintmakers.com/presskit/imagmags.htm.