Old prints by their very nature have been printed. Printing is most commonly associated with Johanes Gutenberg's innovation of movable type in the issuing of his famous Bible in the 15th century. Therefore your print will be less than 550 years old (non-Western prints can conceivably be older, but this is beyond the scope of this article).
Now, how do we determine how old your print is.
Professionals have many criteria at their disposal, which include the paper on which the image has been printed, the method of printing used to print the image, printed signatures or initials and the presence of a copyright year. Each one of these takes years of experience and knowledge to address, however you can get a ball park idea by studying your prints visually and by touch.
For your date inspection, you should clean your hands and prepare a clean space free of clutter and safe of oily substances or liquids. Remove the print from it's frame or protective sleeve so that you can touch it and have a closer look. Take notes while you go through the following three criteria so you can get an idea how old your print is.
The first criteria is the type of paper that was used. You will need to touch the paper. If it feels rough and a bit like a paper towel, fairly rigid but not crumbly then you are probably holding hand made rag paper. This paper was used from the 1450s until well into the early 1800s. A further clue is to lift it up to the light and you should see hundreds of lines in a row. These are from the fine wires that were used to hold up the paper pulp during its manufacture. There could also be a watermark, a transparent symbol or sign designating the papermaker.
If the paper is smooth at the touch, is more brittle and shows no lines up to a source of light then you are looking at a print dating from today til the early 19th century.
The second criteria is determining the method of printing employed to make your print. This demands a much greater level of expertise which is beyond the level of this project. There are hundreds of variations of printing techniques used over the last five centuries such as woodcut, copper engraving, etching, steel engraving, lithography, wood engraving, chromolithography and off-set in chronological order. However off-set is easy to distinguish.
Use a magnifying glass or jewelers loupe to take a close look at a section of the image of your print. If you see a multitude of even overlapping circles in the image then you are in the presence of an off-set print. These prints were made in the twentieth century and are most often of little to no value.
The third criteria is a signature. These are mostly printed signatures. Look on Wikipedia for the artist or engraver and write down their dates. Signatures customarily have the engraver's name on the bottom left and artist's name on the bottom right.
Finally the fourth criteria at your disposal is a copyright year printed on the print itself. The printing of a year on prints started in England in the late 1700s, but are most commonly found on late nineteenth and twentieth century prints. You can generally trust that the date on the print is close to the year of printing. Tip: If you have an off-set (described above) with a date in the 1800s then you have a fake.
Take all the notes all the notes you wrote down during your inspection to determine your date.
Keep in mind that these tips are very general, but they will help you get started.
In the following articles we will address further details about prints so that you can venture out in the antique world in the search of treasures.
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