BORCH Editions Print Studio | Copenhagen

Copper plates

There are numerous possibilities for making the marks and indentations in the copper plates; the artist could scratch or draw with hard, sharp tools directly into the plate, free-form lines can be etched with acid, or aquatint (powdered resin) can be used to create tonal areas. Regardless of which techniques are used, our team of expert printers will always facilitate the processes.

Photogravure is one of the earliest and most beautiful ways of transferring a photographic image to a piece of paper.

The defining characteristic of a photogravure print is that it has thick layers of ink in the dark areas and very thin layers in the light areas, giving it a very wide range of tones – from subtle greys to rich, velvety blacks.
BORCH Editions have been working with photogravure since the early 1990s in order to accommodate artists’ desire to include photographic material into their work.

To make a photogravure, a film with a positive image is placed on a photosensitive polymer plate and exposed to light. The areas exposed to light harden, and the dark areas protected from light can be washed away to create textures, forming the gradient of tones of the original image. The plate can then hold different amounts of ink, depending on the depth of the textures, allowing for a more extensive colour gradation than any other printing technique. Multiple plates and colours can be used to create the desired motif and expression.

Woodcut is the most traditional form of relief prints. The motif is carved from a wood block, with the artist removing the parts of the block that are to appear unprinted on the paper. The ink is applied only to the surface of the plate, leaving the indentations free of ink.

Wood is a natural material that has a visible structures, which can add specific textures to the works. This can be more or less visible, depending on the way the block is prepared and the type of wood used. Multiple blocks can be carved and printed in layers, to create the desired motif with multiple colours and forms of expression.

In a reduction relief print, each colour layer is printed from the same block. More wood is removed from the block for each layer and each colour is printed on top of the last. This means that an entire edition must be printed in one go and every cut is final and cannot be undone.