We very often hear the term silkscreen which, in our contemporary times has been reduced into even a simple digital printing on a plain piece of cloth or canvas.
Our intention here is to clarify a unique kind of silkscreen, the bright and very significant indeed hagiographic silkscreen.
In past times, or even today, producing a hagiographic silkscreen was a very tedious and meticulous task, therefore rather expensive. On canvas crates, where plaster and hagiographic gold has been previously applied by hand various successive printings of different colors are applied, aiming at the final imprint of the religious figure. The more layers of colors, the more relief the final result is, and it makes hard to say whether it is a print or the actual hand painting.
Today’s state-of-the-art printing has bypassed this long and expensive procedure. Of course, preparing of canvas with plaster, rubbing and perfecting an absolutely smooth surface and the application of hagiographic gold are still applied by the hand with great care.
However, instead of following the canvas crane procedure, today we print on the UV plotter and the result is equally impressive.
Each method has its pros and cons.
In the old method, printing over and over the canvasses could result in canvas dilating and subsequently some blurring of the image.
In the new method, the relief of the colors may be less distinct.
Nevertheless, new method’s hagiographic silkscreen renders vivid colors and great sharpness, even in post-stamp size. What is more, the hagiographic gold is happily playful in the background and comes out sharply and shinny in all decorative parts of the garments, gospels etc
Therefore, and with all due respect to our wonderful hagiographers, the hagiographic silkscreen renders extreme details in sizes so small that no hagiographer can work on.
In our company, we have worked on many religious silkscreen images over the last decades and have already available more than a hundred different subjects (Christ, Virgin and Child, religious scenes, Saints) in many sizes, from the very small up to the regular A4 size, with some iconic subjects going on to even larger sizes.
Placing a silkscreen on a plain wooden plate would not do any justice to it, that is why we mount silkscreen on special wooden frames . Since we can bend the canvas, we very often apply silkscreen on 3D surfaces (apart from length and height, we offer the depth dimension as well) which particularly enhances the charm of the gilding and honors, with its beauty, the symbols of our Christian faith.