In French, it means "sprayed, jetted, or spurted." A Giclée is an art print produced with continuous ink jet technology on a specialized printer. That reflects how the printer deposits ink on paper, canvas, or other materials that artists and printmakers favor.
The $250,000 printer employs a unique printing technology that forms images from precisely controlled, variable-sized dots of ink. As a result, the printers produce documents that achieve the visual characteristics of a continuous-tone photograph.
Printing at an addressable resolution of 300 dots per inch (dpi), the printers actually produce images with an apparent (perceived) resolution of 1500-1800 dpi. To achieve a comparable resolution, a color printer that creates images from uniform-sized dots would need to deposit from 1500-1800 of those dots per inch. To date, no other digital printer can create dots small enough to achieve that standard or to produce images with a resolution comparable to this printing.
Because of this high resolution, each sheet produced takes over an hour to produce.
Giclées have undergone extensive testing by Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc. (Grinnell, IA), a leading authority on the care and preservation of prints, photographs, and films. Wilhelm's testing has shown that the predicted display life of a Giclée depends on the interaction of several variables: the inks used to print it, the medium it's printed on, and the display conditions it's exposed to. Wilhelm's standard display condition equals 450 lux 12 hours per day, with 450 lux representing typical home and office lighting conditions. Under those conditions, a Giclée can last as long as 32-36 years before easily noticeable fading begins.
To the best of our knowledge, neither lithographs nor serigraphs have undergone third-party fade testing. However, it's important to note that all color fades. Depending on the composition of the paints, many original watercolors will fade faster than the most stable Giclées. The same goes for Cibachromes, which Wilhelm rated at 29 years. Oddly, some publishers of serigraphs claim that their products are made with inks that contain "automotive-grade pigments," but even that does not provide quantitative display-life characteristics.
Yes. Literally, dozens of museums in the U.S. and abroad have either mounted exhibitions of Giclées or purchased them for their permanent collections. These include The Metropolitan Museum (New York), the Guggenheim (New York), the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston), the Philadelphia Museum, the Butler Institute (Youngstown, OH), the Corcoran (DC), the National Gallery for Women in the Arts (DC), the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts (DC), the Walker Art Center, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the New York Public Library Print Collection, the High Museum (Atlanta), the California Museum of Photography, the National Museum of Mexico, and the San Jose Museum, among others.
Having a highly accurate color reproduction is only the first step of creating a giclée print that is faithful to the original. We only create reproductions on archival quality canvas. This ensures that the print has the look of the original oil. After the print is made, we hand stretch the prints on wooden stretcher frames, again to mimic the original piece. After the reproduction is on the stretcher frames, Ms. Haeffele, the artist, takes and highlights each print using the same oil paints used to create the original. Unlike some giclée prints that are mass produced in factories of "artists", Ms. Haeffele is only willing to sign and number each print when it has been done by her and meets her demanding standards. Once this level of quality is attained, Ms. Haeffele signs and numbers each print. This signature, along with the signed certificate of authenticity, is your assurance that you have purchased a quality art reproduction that you can enjoy for years to come. To help ensure this longevity, each print is covered with the same archival quality varnish that is used on the original pieces.
©2000-2008 Deborah Haeffele
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