Caroline Lucas studied art in Paris, Rome and London. During World War II she moved to Lewes in East Sussex and established an art gallery with her sister, Frances Byng-Stamper. They staged over 40 exhibitions, which included work by Matisse, Roualt and Duncan Grant, a near neighbour, as well as Lucas’ own work. The sisters had founded the Miller’s Press (named after their house) in 1945 with the purpose of encouraging British artists to work in the little used medium of colour lithography. They commissioned and published prints by a number of artists, including Vanessa Bell, David Jones, Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde; the first portfolio of eight hand-pulled lithographs was published in an edition of 250. In addition they founded the Society of London Painter-Printers in conjunction with the Redfern Gallery, London in 1948.

Glossary

  • Edition

    All copies of a book, print, portfolio, sculpture, etc., issued or produced at one time or from a single set of type. Printed works can be made in an edition of between one and many thousands of copies. With most printing techniques the plate or screen will become worn if very many prints are made, so to maintain quality (and exclusivity) editions of original prints are usually kept below one hundred copies and normally average between thirty and fifty copies. Prints made up of several different plates can be extremely complicated and time-consuming to edition, so in these cases editions are kept low for practical reasons. Sculptural editions are a set of cast sculptures taken from the same mould or master. These editions are usually much lower, consisting of no more than six casts. Though each cast in an edition might have a lower value than a unique piece, it may be a more effective way of offsetting costs of an expensive process such as bronze casting.

  • Lithography

    Lithography means, literally, stone drawing. In addition to fine grain lithographic stones, metal plates can also be used for lithography. The method relies on the fact that grease repels water. An image is drawn in a greasy medium onto the stone or plate, which is then dampened with water. Greasy printing ink rolled onto that surface will adhere to the design but be repelled by the damp area. The inked image is transferred to the paper via a press. For large editions, the grease is chemically fixed to the stone, and gum arabic, which repels any further grease marks but does not repel water, is applied to the rest of the surface. For colour lithography the artist uses a separate stone or plate for each colour required.

  • Medium

    Refers to either the material used to create a work of art, craft or design, i.e. oil, bronze, earthenware, silk; or the technique employed i.e. collage, etching, carving. In painting the medium refers to the binder for the pigment, e.g. oil, egg, acrylic dispersion. The plural form is media.

  • Portfolio

    A set of pictures (as drawings, photographs or prints) either bound in book form or loose in a folder. These can be by the same artist or individual works by a selection of artists. The term also refers to the folder which holds the set.