Ted Kincaid
One of the first projects Manneken Press published was by Texas artist Ted Kincaid- a group of six large photogravures, printed as an extended sequence of monoprints, which combine 19th C. (photogravure) and 21st C. (digital) technologies.
For the project we chose six images from a large series of drawings that Kincaid had made on his computer, printed out on his desktop printer, and then photographed out of focus to blur the image using a film camera. At Manneken Press we used the original 4 x 5 negatives to produce six copper photogravure plates. Ted’s idea was to make a series of original but related impressions from each plate rather than an edition, with the variations achieved by changing the ink and chine colle’ paper colors with each print. He then travelled from his home in Dallas to Manneken Press (which was located at that time in Morgantown, WV) to direct the printing of the plates. For each impression, Ted chose an ink color for the plate and a sheet of handmade Moriki paper from an array of available colors. The colored Moriki paper trimmed to the same size as the plate was placed over the inked plate, and rice starch paste was applied to the back of the Moriki paper. A sheet of white Somerset paper was placed on top and the whole thing was run through the press, with the chine colle’ paper accepting the ink and being laminated to the backing paper in one step. For some impressions the plate was re-inked in another color and the Moriki paper was registered and printed a second time. Other impressions have no chine colle’. Twenty five unique impressions were taken from each of the six plates, and the finished prints were signed and numbered 1/25 – 25/25.