How to Identify Prints

Before digital and photographic technology, images were transferred to paper from stone, metal, and wood. Part of a good education in art history involves studying and identifying these different printing processes. While printmaking is a field you can study for life, you can learn the basics of identifying relief, intaglio, and planographic lithography to start building your identification skills.

EditSteps

EditIdentifying Relief Prints

Understand the process of relief printing. Relief printing is the oldest and most traditional printing technology, and involves reproducing images at its most basic. In relief printing, a wood or metal relief block is carved by cutting away the areas of the picture that will not be printed, then ink is applied to the raised areas either by dabbing the areas to be printed, or rolling the ink on. The final stage of the process involves transferring the ink to the page by laying a sheet of paper and applying pressure. Examples of relief prints include:
- Wood block printing
- Linocut
- Type-set
Examine the rim of the print. One of the quickest and most reliable ways of identifying relief prints is to examine the edges of the print for evidence. The process by which ink is transferred from the block via pressure will produce a characteristic rim around the edges of life. This is a feature that is only characterized by relief printing processes, so it's always a sure sign.^[1]
- For comparison purposes, examine the serial number on any bill of US currency. You should notice the rim of the numbers is slightly darker than the inside. This is a sign of relief printing. Look for this tendency in the piece that you're examining.^[2]
Look for signs of embossing. Another fairly reliable way of identifying relief printing is to look at the back of the piece for signs of embossing, another result of the transfer process in relief printing. Examine the page and feel with your hands for signs of raised perforation and pressure, signifiers of the paper being pressed on the relief block.
- Compared with intaglio printing, the pressure required to make relief prints is relatively minor, meaning that embossing will sometimes be difficult to see and differentiate from that of intaglio printing, which is more severe.
- Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is often used to highlight and document the physical signifiers of embossing in relief printing.^[3]
Look for signs of cutting in the cross-hatching or shaded areas. While it might seem obvious, one of the best ways of distinguishing relief from intaglio printing is in examining the black marks as closely as possible and trying to decide whether it looks like they were raised, or the white marks were raised on the original block. This is part intuition and part experience, but one of the best places to look is in shaded or cross-hatched areas.
- On relief prints, you should be able to see that shading is made by cutting out little wedges between short lines, then cutting a long line at right-angles, leaving smooth outside lines.

EditIdentifying Intaglio Prints

Understand the process of intaglio printing. Intaglio is Italian for "incising," and correspondingly revolves around a process of applying ink into the grooves or etches or engravings, then using a lot of pressure to transfer that ink from the indents onto the page. This usually results in slightly crisper, more substantial lines that you can learn to identify. The process was developed in the 1500s. Engraving and etching are both styles of intaglio printing, with slightly different techniques and signifiers.^[4]
- Engraving is typically done on copper plates, using a burin, a v-shaped cutting tool, to remove slivers of metal from the surface of the plate. The shape of engraved lines are typically quite clean, and pointed at each end, where the lines will swell or shrink.
- Etching is done using acid to draw freely over wax placed on the copper plating, using a needle. Etched lines will have a blunter end than engraved lines, and you should be able to see signs of the wax in unevenness and crumbling at the edge of the lines. In general, etched lines are less precise.
Look for plate marks. Because lots of pressure is used to transfer the ink, the metal printing plate will leave an impression in the paper on intaglio prints. The corners of these marks should be rounded, since sharped edges would rip the paper, and the edges will often retain traces of ink that wasn't completely wiped off the plate during the printing process. Plate marks are always signifiers of intaglio printing, whether engravings or etchings.
- If you don't see a plate mark, that isn't necessarily the sign that it isn't an intaglio print. It won't show up on every intaglio if the plate was wiped off completely.
Look for raised ink. Because of the way the printing process works, the strongest and darkest lines should be raised when compared with the surrounding areas, because it will take more pressure and more ink to make the darker line pop out. This is one of the most reliable signifiers of intaglio printing, etched or engraved.
Look for varying intensity of color in single lines. In intaglio printing, the lines will have varying levels of intensity in terms of the ink displacement, compared to relief printing, which should be relatively uniform. This is because the depth of the grooves can be adjusted, resulting in darker or lighter printed lines, accordingly, in the same line.
- Look along longer lines to see whether or not they become darker in the interior. If so, it's almost surely a sign of intaglio printing.
Look at the shape of the line. Engraved lines will flow smoothly, swelling some before tapering to a point, while etched lines lines will have shakier, round edges. Often, intaglio prints will involve bits of both types of printing, as is found on US currency, in the printed pictures on the front and back.
Study more intaglio techniques. There are lots of subcategories of intaglio printing that will display particulars of the process, so you can narrow your identification skills even more specifically. Other intaglio techniques include:
- Aquatint
- Mezzotint
- Steel Engraving
- Stipple Engraving

EditIdentifying Planographic Lithographs

Understand the different varieties of lithography. Lithography is a big term often used to refer to many different styles of printing, contemporary and classical. But, in pre-photographic terms, planographic lithography is that which is printed from a flat surface. In planographic printing, plates are prepared by laying down an image in a greasy or oily substance, typically called tusche, that will hold ink. The blank areas of the plate will then be washed off with water, removing the ink from those areas. Types of planographic lithography include:
- Chalk-manner prints, which are made by using wax crayon to draw the image onto limestone.
- Chromolithography, which are identifiable based on the stippling of multiple colors on the plate.
- Tinted lithography is made via two plates, one of which uses broad individual background strokes of tinting to give the image background color.
- Transfer lithography isn't transferred directly from stone to paper, but from transfer paper to the stone itself, meaning that the image needn't be drawn in reverse originally.
Magnify the image. Unlike some of the other varieties of pre-photographic print identification, planographic lithography needs to be examined using at least 10x magnification to notice the signifiers necessary for proper identification. Since the absence of intaglio and relief printing marks doesn't necessarily mean you're dealing with a lithograph, it's important to look closely at the images and not take absence for proof.
Look for the absence of plate marks. If you find plate marks, you're always dealing with a relief or, more likely, an intaglio print. Because the image is taken directly from a flat stone, there will never be plate marks of the sort you'd find on those prints, on a lithograph.
Look for the flatness of the ink. Upon close examination, you should notice that there is no difference in the depth of the ink and the blank paper. Everything should be on the same level, with no imprinting of whiteness or darkness. Noticing this will require serious magnification, but it's a good indication that you're dealing with some variety of planographic printing, since the ink has come from a flat surface that didn't imprint itself in the paper.
Look for the illusion of shade, created by multiple layers. Since the planographic surface holds and repels ink on the same level, tonal variation is created by varying the amount of surface area covered and not covered by varying the quantity of ink deposited on the paper, either by using multiple layers and multiple prints, or by applying areas of heavier wax on the stone.
- Usually, shaded areas will be spotty, shooting almost stipple-like dots that have the same tonal value. One mark will not be lighter or darker than the other surrounding marks, nor should they be evenly spaced. This creates the "illusion of shade."
- A print with multiple colors will overlap those colors in certain areas. In general, you won't find green, but overlapping areas of blue and yellow, a more efficient process of printing. Shade in color prints is typically made via variation of tone.^[5]
Look for blurriness. Typically, fine details will be somewhat blurrier in transfer lithographs than in other types of printmaking. Often, the paper won't quite stick, or will otherwise shift around when pressure is applied to the paper, and the details tend to suffer when this happens. This is typically a sign of planographic lithography processes.^[6]

EditTips

Professionals spend years learning the intricacies of identifying historical art prints. If you want to learn more about identifying different types of prints, check out "How to identify prints: a complete guide to manual and mechanical processes from woodcut to inkjet." 2nd ed., rev. London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.

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