Stone and Press Gallery Prints Multiples

Leonard Merchant's mezzotint, "Snail in Cup" is inscribed for fellow artist, Fritz Eichenberg. While a student at the Central School for Arts and Crafts in London, a young Leonard Marchant found an engraving rocker in a cupboard and proceeded to turn himself into a master of the painstaking art of mezzotinting. Marchant, who has died in Shrewsbury aged 70, grew up in Simonstown, the Royal Navy's enclave in South Africa. Though his first job was as a parliamentary messenger, he taught himself to paint and, aged 19, was given a one-man show in Cape Town. Fired by this success, he left for England to study painting and, he claimed, to escape the stifling home atmosphere created by his Catholic mother and aunts. (His father was killed in the second world war.) Without contacts in London, he phoned Jacob Epstein, whose recommendation resulted in a grant to study briefly at the Central School. It was later, when studying full-time at the Central, that he saw the mezzotints of the Japanese master, Yozo Hamaguchi, in a London gallery. He was hooked. Creating a mezzotint is tedious in the extreme. The copper plate must first be prepared with a "rocker" which roughens the surface. A plate may be "rocked" 30 or 40 times. The rough texture is then reduced with a burnisher and a scraper, allowing the print a range of tones from velvety black through the greys to white. Marchant's plates could be months in the making. But the technical demands were the least of his worries. In its 18th- and 19th-century heyday, mezzotint was solely a reproductive medium, for copying masters such as Reynolds and Turner. The development of photography rendered it unfashionable, and by the 1960s the technique, known as la manière anglaise, was a bygone medium. Marchant, by now a teacher in printmaking at the Central, began to create original mezzotints with a colleague, Radavan Kraguly. A perfectionist, he seemed to revel in the straitjacket procedure. Perhaps it was the metaphor of bringing darkness out of light that appealed to this straight-talking, sometimes sombre, man, who would suddenly relax and light up like a gleaming hue on one of his prints. His work was of squares and triangles with the occasional cat, black and ominous, and carefully arranged still lifes, featuring plants, a seed pod, a pot he might have bought at auction to celebrate the sale of a print. There were one-man shows, notably at the Bankside Gallery. He sold well at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, was a Florence Biennale prizewinner, spent a fellowship year at the British School in Rome, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. But making mezzotints was not a paying job. Marchant and his South African wife...

Marc Balakjian was enigmatic in his subject matter creating images that are disturbing in their ambiguity. Is this image just striped fabric tied with ropes on a platform or is this is a flag-draped coffin symbolizing those who passed "in memory of an historic phrase"? Politicians may turn the phrase but a price must be paid. This small edition mezzotint was created in 1975 in an edition of only 5. Armenian by descent, Marc Balakjian was raised in Lebanon. He spent his early years in the small town of Rayak, before moving to Beirut at the age of 10. He came to England in 1966, initially to study architecture with a firm in Oxford. He then decided to study art at Hammersmith College of Art and took up a postgraduate degree in printmaking at the Slade School of Art in 1971. After graduating he began working at Studio Prints in 1973, just as it was establishing itself in Queen’s Crescent. By 1976 he had become a full time partner, collaborating with other artists as well as continuing his own work, much of which is inspired by his Armenian and Lebanese culture and heritage. By the 1980s work was falling off, so Balakjian and Studio Prints introduced in-house plate-making to serve painters and sculptors who had little experience with printmaking. Artists such as Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach, Lucian Freud and Ken Kiff...

This Finnish artist creates a mezzotint in black and white. This impression is #44 of 100 and is signed, dated and titled in pencil. Jukka Vanttinen (Finn, b. 1954) Jukka Vanttinen...

Lois Ward's "Red Damsel" is a color mezzotint created in 1994 in a very small edition of just 10. This impression is #2 of 10. A young human figure in green gazes down on a Tinker B...

Carol Wax's mezzotint, "Singer 10101", is an image of Singer I as seen through a drafting template. It was issued as an edition of 40 and was printed at the Indiana University print...

"Reflection" is an etching created in an edition of 50. This is impression #15. Ivan Valtchev, who was born in Germany, an internationally acclaimed scu...

This image seems to capture the opening of knowledge through books. At the top of the imagemoors are opening revealing a sliver of light providing entree to yer massive book at the ...

This impression is #5 out of 40 Anne Dykmans was born in Verviers, Belgium, in 1952. She is a graduate of l’École Nationale d’Architecture et des Arts Visuels de La Cambre in Brussels, where she studied printmaking. Specialist of the Mezzotint (mezzotinto) technique, she is especially known for her prints of interior scenes, where light and dark come together in amazing chiaroscuro effects. She has presented her work in solo and group shows in Belgium and in many countries including; among others: France, Germany, Spain, Canada, Japan, China, and the USA. She was awarded in 1983 the Prix de la Jeune Gravure Belge in Antwerp. In 1986 she received the Prize of the 8th Biennale of Engraving of Fredrikstad, Norway. She won in 1988 the Gold Medal at the 2nd Triennial of Mezzotint Engraving of Sopot, Poland. Her prints are included in many private and public collections around the world. Anne Dykmans taught engraving from 1984 to 2017 at the Constantin Meunier...

Hino creates a still life of a lotus from an edition of 65. A prominent figure in Buddhist and Egyptian culture, and native flower for both India and Vietnam, the lotus holds enormous symbolic weight. It spans various thousand-year-old Eastern cultures and yet, is still considered one of the most sacred flowers today. So what is it about this mysterious blossom that people find so enrapturing? Its colorful bloom is an obvious suspect, but the lotus also has a life cycle unlike any other. With its roots based in mud, it submerges every night into murky river water, and—undeterred by its dirty environment—it miraculously re-blooms the next morning without residue on its petals. Although cultures have their own interpretations of this daily process, there is a general consensus among ancient texts...

Maurice Pasternak has created a surreal landscape that includes traditional images of a sun-filled sky, dark shadows cast on water and through leafy trees all under the guise of thre...

Hope is an archival color print with sculptured and hot gloss stamp printed in an edition of 50. This is impression #25 of 50. ARTIST STATEMENT: Language is liquid and as HOPE was ...

Interior with a red shawl conveys a quite different mood and feeling: one of calm, and suspension of time. Here the suggestion is that the woman is waiting ...

Both of Arms' Lake Como images were mostly printed in color. is a rarer black and white impression, John Taylor Arms was born in Washington, DC. He studied architecture at the Massa...

Viewers are always curious about this image. I count 20 people seated -- all men. Why? Three of the men are looking over their shoulders toward the back. Are they impatient to see late arrivers? The seating seems to be pew like. Pasternak, like most artists, wants the viewer to bring their own interpretation to the image and is most circumspect to give an explanation. A church, a union hall, a political meeting -- which is it? The mood seems to be one of anxiety rather than celebration. The artist did answer why all men. He says that "he likes to create the tension of the image on the page. Putting women and men together...

This is a single color lithograph created by Matthew Roath as part of Tamarind Institute PTP. The Collaborating printer isAndreea Cristina Mateescu....

Laurent Schkolnyk created this original mezzotint, L' Anais that is signed, titled and numbered #22 in an edition of 30. Since the fruit was so perishable, it became a symbol of lu...

Moody, mysterious, majestic – these are some of the ways to describe the mezzotints of Frederick Mershimer. His images travel through the serenity of a Brooklyn neighborhood on a sti...

Delta was first brought to attention as one of the dramatic images illustrated in Carol Wax's book, The Mezzotint, History and Technique. It was also exhibited at the New Orleans Mu...

Rudolph Taylor created this single color lithograph at Tamarind Institute in PTP. It was printed by Emery Spina in an edition of 15. This is impression #8. Mawu-Lisa is a creator goddess, associated with the Sun and Moon in Dahomey mythology. In some myths, she is the wife of the male god Lisa. Mahu and Lisa are the children of Nana Buluku, and are the parents of Xevioso, The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by conquering key cities...

"Candle Light" is a lithograph signed, dated, titled and editioned in pencil. It is #2 from an edition of 65 and was an exclusive publication of Stone and Press. Shadow and light are...

Sharon Augusta Mitchell created "Cena Ultima" as if guinea vultures were the apostles in a "last supper" pose arrayed around a carcass in an edition of 100. This is impression #9 fr...

"His Timmer Staff" is an image of herding pigs by William Strang. It is a fine impression in fine condition in an edition of 20 signed and inscribed by the artist. Binyon 119 One...

Binyon 232 - A fine impression in fine condition in an edition of 55 signed and inscribed by the artist. Strang was a prolific printmaker and across his lifetime produced over 750 o...