Has the art-collecting bug bitten you? If not, maybe you’re merely looking to warm your space with art. Etchings and other types of fine art prints can help add interest to any room in your home while supporting your effort to tie an interior design together.
First invented in the 1500s, etching is a way of incising lines in a metal plate by first drawing on an acid-resistant coating, or ground, to reveal the metal beneath. The plate is then submerged in acid, which “bites” the lines into the metal plate. The ground is then removed and the plate inked for pressing. Etched lines tend to reveal the movement of the artist’s hand more than a technique like engraving, since the image is created on a softer ground.
“People often ask me what types of prints they should collect — etchings or woodcuts or linocuts or silkscreens or lithographs or whatever,” explains Ryan Cross, associate director of Boston’s Barbara Krakow Gallery. “But it’s really more how the artist used those processes and what he or she was trying to express through the medium.”
Find a collection of etchings and other fine art prints today on 1stDibs.