Yesteryear Prints - A Christchurch landmark

Christchurch picture framer and art print retailer Yesteryear Prints is to close its doors after 35 years.

This suburban print gallery in Beckenham was very well known in Christchurch both for their unique collection of art prints from NZ and around the world as well as first class picture framing - often with a long waitlist.  Yesteryear's longevity in the competitive world of art retail is a tribute to its current owners Norma and Graeme Elcock who steadily built the business over the 80s and 90s into a very successful store.

The business is not being sold as a going concern, the stock is being put on sale and the distinctive building has sold.  We understand their framer, Anton, is going to another framing shop in Ferrymead.

Yesteryear Prints 28 June 2017

Norma and Graeme had a very particular eye for older style (ok, I'll say it, "yesteryear") prints - classic Pears soap advertisements and Victoriana was a particular strength (they supplied us with many of these re-prints of old public notices in our letterpress posters collection).

We don't have quite the same depth in these specialities but as NZ Fine Prints stock over 2500 different titles of art prints just a few minutes away from the Yesteryear Prints previous location we should be able to help you find the perfect print - please check out our catalogue online at Prints.co.nz. You can collect prints from us if you are in Christchurch or we deliver nationwide.

Local art publishers have world-wide circulation

2016 has been the 50th anniversary of the founding of our company. This has been a great reason to revisit our history, much of which we have in scrapbooks (actually bound book proofs with blank pages of their earliest publications) dating back to the 1960s.  This article is from 1973 and is particularly interesting as it features the founders of New Zealand Fine Prints Don & Enid Ellis, discussing how they started in the art publishing business with Christchurch reporter David Young.  A note on the name change - in the 1990s the publishing and mail order businesses of Avon Fine Prints and Capper Press were merged into a single company around the time we shifted focus to publishing and online retail when our catalogues went online at prints.co.nz).

Local art publishers have world-wide circulation

"Local Art Publishers" article from 1973

The Queen, the Pope, President Nixon, Emperor Hirohito and Mr Trudeau are among the recipients of the work of a Christchurch company, Avon Fine Prints Ltd.

One of Avon’s more monumental achievements, Cook’s Artists, a collection of the drawings and paintings done by men on Cook’s voyages, became the official New Zealand Government book for 1969.

That year was the tricentenary of Cook’s discovery of New Zealand and the book went to official recipients and private collectors all round the world.

“You name the country - we sent it there”, says Mr D.G. Ellis, who with his wife,

Enid & Don Ellis of Avon Fine Prints

runs Avon Fine Prints.

Both aged about 30, the couple have for the last seven years been publishing reproductions of early New Zealand paintings and prints as well as facsimiles of fine, historical books.

Publishing, not printing, is their line, their speciality being limited, hand-numbered prints of scenes which, while not common, are not unfamiliar sights on carefully decorated walls.

“We are a pirate outfit really,” said Mr Ellis when I telephoned to ask about his operation.

But in a personal interview, this same candour revealed that his and his wife’s interest in New Zealand nineteenth century art is considerable. The couple have an extensive personal collection and it was Mr Ellis’s father’s knowledge of the subject which really led to the establishment of the present business.

World hunt

Returning from Australia in the early 1960s with a bundle of New Zealand paintings by such artists as Hoyte, Gully and Lindauer - all purchased for about £30 and resold here for considerably more - Mr Ellis jun. went hunting for similar material round the world.

His best deal, he says, was a Lindauer which he bought for £20 and sold for £900 - the then top price for a New Zealand painting.

But while the market knew no bounds, the supply of material was distinctly limited.

“So”, he explained, “we had to print our own stuff.”

Mrs Ellis said that in the early 1960s they did a great deal of original research with the help of the librarian at the Alexander Turnbull Library (Mr Tony Murray-Oliver), who suggested that they start publishing limited edition prints.

To start with they did three tiny Canterbury prints by Holmes, hand-coloured, each with a run of 300.

Since then the company has published about 160 editions of prints by artists such as Blomfield, Chevalier, Gully, Hodgkins, Hoyte, Lindauer, Nairn, Sharpe and Wilson, as well as a series of early New Zealand town scenes.

Surprisingly, there is little original work of Canterbury, Mr Ellis pointed out. Canterbury was settled later than many other areas and Dr Barker was on the scene with his camera almost before the artists could set up easel.

Again, the New Zealand material that is suitable for reproduction is limited and Avon Fine Prints is now moving into other Pacific countries to continue its work.

It is the only company of its type in this part of the world, so includes Australian and Hawaiian art among the work it reproduces.

“We can do it in New Zealand because the printing works are geared to smaller runs than elsewhere”, said Mrs Ellis.

“We have the advantage of being able to do a run as small as 300 - which other countries just won’t touch - and we can still obtain quality from our printers.”

Why do people buy prints?

Essentially, say the Ellises, they like the picture for aesthetic, historical and decorative reasons. They also buy prints as an investment.

The object of a limited edition is that it will at least hold its value, monetarily, as well as providing an inbuilt reassurance to buyers that not everyone owns a copy.

The prints do appear to be a reasonable investment - a $6 Canterbury print now sells for $24 and others from limited editions show similar upward movement.

An offshoot of the Avon company is Capper Press, which produces unlimited editions - usually about 2000 - of New Zealand paintings, which sell more cheaply.

Capper Press also publishes facsimile copies of such early New Zealand books as Knocking about in New Zealand by Charles Money.

Spectacular

But the most spectacular undertakings have been Avon’s large, historical book productions.

Apart from the Cook publication, which contained much original research and previously unpublished material, Avon reproduced Pictorial Illustrations of New Zealand, by S.C. Brees, as a facsimile which sold for $60 and which now changes hands for $125.

Now Avon has just completed the printing of a facsimile edition of New Zealand: Graphic and Descriptive by C.D. Barraud (1877).

The giant book, with its 22in by 17in pages, printed on special paper with 76 illustrations including 24 colour plates and a Moroccan finish is a colossal undertaking. The 1000 copies being printed require 11 tons of paper, and special, unmarked skins for the leather cover.

Subscribers from around the world have paid their $35 deposit on the $150 subscription price and, following in the tradition of the 97 year-old original, will have their names bound into the volume - one of the few departures from the true facsimile.

Interestingly, some of the names in the back are the same as the ones in the front - the descendants of the original subscribers in some cases have followed in their grandparents’ footsteps.

Only a few copies remain of the original volume and many of these are now scattered.

“We’re not interested in publishing new books - writers drive me up the wall. We like our authors dead 100 years,” Mr Ellis said.

Not justified

As far as paintings are concerned: “We’d like to go more modern - a lot more modern - but there are not the sales in this country to justify this. 

“Today people in this country are getting sophisticated - they know what they want.

“We’re not arty-minded or anything like that, but we’re interested in good New Zealand paintings and we are leading people to the situation where they can make a choice,”

Mrs Ellis put in: “We are sales and commercially orientated, but our work stems from an interest and a knowledge in our material. You’ve got to put a premium on these things.”

With one exception - when the work was sent to Hong Kong - all the printing is done in New Zealand.

Avon pays reproduction fees to the individual and the institution owning the material. It is often institutions which constitute a large proportion of the buyers of reproductions.

Its reputation now firmly entrenched in so many parts of the world, Avon Fine Prints could continue to keep Christchurch on the map for some years to come.

But however they develop, the Ellises are determined that their work will never loom so large that their personal touch in business is lost.

Collecting prints from NZ Fine Prints? An update.

Running a business in Christchurch as the city rebuilds is a challenge.  It's exciting seeing the new buildings going up and houses finally being repaired.  However the constant noise is wearing, roadworks droning on from streets away all day for weeks at a time, our new neighbour is having seemingly endless stone walls built, the tink, tink, tink of hammers and the snarl of stone cutting saws 8-6 six days a week for the past six months.

Forced to relocate from the central city to Cashmere by the government's confiscation of our gallery's land for the "green frame" (now being developed by Fletcher's for housing) we now relish the 21st century way of doing business close to home.  It seems like this is the way of the future for a specialised niche business that sells over the internet rather than through a traditional retail store (NZFP's roots are in mail order, not retail).

Post earthquake street art outside NZ Fine Prints' new home

Just after NZ Fine Prints arrived at 139 Hackthorne Rd a previous neighbour called the council about Jason Kelly's "Greenzone" artwork on the plywood fence around our collapsed garage which they thought was too big for a "business sign" in our part of town. CCC officials then came out, said "Greenzone" was (of course!) a piece of street art rather than a non-complying sign and they checked out that NZ Fine Prints complied with their regulations (employee numbers, selling online etc). They assured us that our business model fitted in with the pre-earthquake city plan and in fact, given our size and the reality that our customers purchased online rather than in store, we didn't even need a special post earthquake 5 year resource consent that some businesses had to apply for.

Today we've had another neighbour on our shared driveway concerned about someone coming in to pick up a print they had ordered and parking for a few minutes in a shared area common to our three properties.

Until we have our top garage rebuilt (which we are going to use for pickups and courier deliveries directly from Hackthorne Rd) we'd like to ask that customers collecting prints park at the top of our long drive and walk down if they are able to.  A little bit of extra consideration that will help us harmoniously coexist with our neighbours until we get our top garage re-built which will move all business traffic off the driveway completely. Yes, we are still waiting for our insurance company to get on with our claim five years after the quakes - but we are confident this will be completed by the end of 2016. Thanks.

Art print publisher devastated by arson attack overnight

We were absolutely shocked to learn that local art print publisher Image Vault was the victim of an arson attack in the early hours of this morning.  The current owners had only purchased the business back in July of this year.  Christchurch businesses have been through a lot over the past five years, and this event is yet another of those unpredictable "black swans",  but also one that couldn't come at a worse time of year for a business that supplies the Xmas gift market and are at the height of their print production schedule.  We are heartened by the fact Carl and Nicola are reported as saying they were fully insured and able to start printing again at temporary premises and our staff will be offering every assistance to them in the coming days.

The first thing my mother said when she heard of this was to text me that this was the same time of year as our "factory fire".  This reminded me of one of my earliest memories - which is of the fire that gutted our family's picture moulding factory back in the late 1970s. Not arson, this was caused by thinners spontaneously igniting in the dangerous goods store and the intense heat was such that it melted the steel girders of our building in Carlisle St. I remember being lifted up to look into the cab of the fire engine and the smell of the fire.  This was the second time Avon Fine Prints (as New Zealand Fine Prints was known as back then) had been hit by fire, their office above the National Party headquarters in Christchurch had also caught fire when my parents were on an overseas trip in the late 1960s, they returned home to find that their staff had relocated back to the sitting room of their house!

I hope that our business's experience of recovering from similarly devastating fires a long time ago means that the path back to normality for Image Vault will not as long or as hard as it must seem from the vantage point of today for Carl, Nicola, Jen, Amanda and Tony at Image Vault today.

Print on demand and hopefully cloud storage of their catalogue of files that they need to print canvas art prints will mean technically they can be back in business quite quickly, but the framing side of Image Vault's business may take longer to recover due to the loss of equipment and supplies - we may not be able to offer the standard box framing on their titles for at least a few weeks.  We are also concerned that because their back stock of off-set prints will have been lost many of their older titles from artists like Grahame Sydney, Diana Adams, Barry Ross Smith, Jason Kelly etc may not be able to be re-printed on demand as the contracts with the artists last only as long as physical stock was on hand.  NZ Fine Prints hold a few months worth of stock of most of these titles but this may mean some popular prints may be deleted well before the editions would have sold out naturally.

The earthquakes were incredibly disruptive but print buyers were overwhelmingly supportive and understanding of delays as we all juggled frantically behind the scenes to get their orders shipped. In the weeks following the Feb 22nd quake we had just one customer cancel their print order. This is another of those times that we will do our very best to let you know immediately if there will be a delay in shipping your order and in return ask for a bit of leeway if your print is delivered outside our normal delivery guidelines due to this devastating fire at one of our favourite suppliers.  

Christchurch Artist Hamish Allan's New Prints

ChCh Artist Hamish Allan

"Santa Barbara" - 500 x 500mm Art Print $64.95

Leaving out unnecessary imagery creates a sense of space and
serenity in the artwork of Christchurch painter Hamish Allan.   Composing a scene that is stripped back to the essential image means not making an exact copy of messy reality from a particular viewpoint. Because of this these new prints in stock here at NZ Fine Prints Christchurch Prints collection are clearly Canterbury landscapes and buildings but also distill from them a sense of place that is more of distillation of essential New Zealandness.

Allan's prints are contemporary artworks that give a sense of place with an accessible hook to draw the viewer in, Allan's love of classic cars and buildings viewed, as he says, "through rose tinted glasses at times gone by".   Look closer and the viewer begins to notice that Allan's paintings are also full of sly references to other things, for instance the road cone in "Santa Barbara" lets us know that this painting is post-earthquake.  We also enjoy the way Hamish pays tribute to famous NZ artists - for instance by hanging Don Binney's "Pacific Frigate Bird" print from the Barry Lett Gallery multiples on the wall of the upstairs room in "Blue HQ".  There are now over 20 Hamish Allan prints available, on both fine art paper and canvas.

The exhibition that will change Christchurch forever

“Rise” at the Canterbury Museum (and beyond with the “Big Walls” component of the show) will be Christchurch's most influential art exhibition since an alternative exhibition to the Canterbury Society of Arts annual show was put on by “The Group” in 1927.

This single exhibition will inspire a transformation of the visual culture of Christchurch in the years to come. The excitement surrounding "Rise" is not just the sheer joy of seeing for real superb artworks from the art movement that will define our generation but also the way that the creative sails of the new Christchurch are being filled with an inspirational gale.

The Canterbury Museum director Anthony Wright should be knighted for taking the bold step of hosting “Rise”.  Nurturing our community through a strengthening of our culture in a time of need - it's a landmark step in the evolution of the role of the modern museum.  

With the art gallery out of commission and large spaces hard to find hosting "Rise" at Canterbury Museum shows a brave and open minded attitude about the museum’s role in the Christchurch of today.  “Rise” is going to be such a momentous event because it is about the people who are going to see it as much as being about the artists whose work is on show.  Street art is the punk rock of art, the movement that inspires a generation of people to take up an art form because through the lens of something new they catch a glimpse of their own inner artist.  Street art is accessible, inclusive - and as will be shown in Christchurch post "Rise", transformative.

The Oi YOU team have clearly built a professional businesslike organisational structure to put on a blockbuster like “Rise” (7500 visitors in the first few days). With a history of two successful shows in organisers George Shaw and Shannon Webster’s hometown of Nelson, then taking their collection to Sydney and Adelaide the unique catalyst aspect of the event has grown using an exhibition of their superb personal collection of street art as the occasion for local and international street artists to complete works commissioned specially for the show.

Essentially it's the attitude of street art that is just so universally appealing. It was the spilling over of the exhibition into the main museum that tickled me, whimsical wordplay, sly commentary and placing of objects springing from an intelligent cultural awareness.  The mysterious Milton Springsteen’s paintings were fine examples of how you can subvert and transform most effectively if you first take the time to gain a deep appreciation and understanding of your source material.

To see prints by NZ artists such as Component’s fishing boy “Life is a Lottery” looking perfectly at ease next to Banksy is as thrilling for a New Zealander as having Lorde at the top of the global charts. 

Street art will save Christchurch from blandness in a rebuild driven by engineers rather than imagineers.  Sofles piece behind where our gallery and warehouses were on Hereford St is particularly poignant for us, it’s that mix of skill, imagination and connectedness that makes art meaningful over the long term, we talk of finding a print that “resonates” with a customer, it’s so much more useful and deeper than finding what someone simply “likes”.

This is the only exhibition I am insisting my non arty friends go to see.  I want every teacher to arrange a class trip (Rise runs until 23 March 2014 so there is plenty of time in the new school year). Every Christchurch person who doesn’t think they like art should go too - as street art is the perfect gateway drug that can turn people on to how much fun and enjoyment there is in the world of art.   As Banksy himself has shown if you can reach the market of people who don’t buy prints this is many times larger than the market of people who regularly do, likewise “Rise” is the way to engage with people put off by the thicket of theory that envelopes contemporary art. 

The only negative is that annoying feeling of the world discovering your favourite band!  Street art is the most exciting thing in the art world right now and to have “Rise” transforming your hometown in a globally significant way is only just a little bit short of unbelievable.   Street art is the art movement of now and because of the unique situation of Christchurch post earthquake “Rise” will be a pivotal show when art history grads of 2114 are researching the impact of this exciting art movement across the world.

NZ Fine Prints sells gallery's land to the Crown

New Zealand Fine Prints and associated companies (such as Capper Press and Avon Fine Prints) moved into the old Royal Exchange Assurance building at 202 Hereford St in the Christchurch CBD from cramped quarters above the National Party offices in Tuam St. It was the end of the 1960s and staff numbers were growing with projects like "Captain Cook's Artists in the Pacific" in full swing.  For nearly fifty years the 1890's era warehouses at the rear of the site was packed full of books and prints and the 1920s two storied building facing Hereford St comprised gallery and office space.

After September 4 2010 we spent well into six figures on temporary repairs and because of this early warning we were extremely fortunate that no-one was injured or killed although February 22nd 2011's earthquake damaged both buildings beyond repair.

Because such a large proportion of our business is now online (New Zealand Fine Prints is behind NZ's largest art print and poster site - prints.co.nz) the physical destruction of our buildings was, we thought, a temporary setback - an opportunity even to rethink the design of our buildings to relate better to other businesses on our block with a more pedestrian friendly access from Cashel St, Liverpool St and Woolsack Lane.   Our plan had always been to redevelop the site over time, preserving the character of the buildings in a central city location with plenty of parking with our unique business offering the largest range of prints in NZ as the anchor tenant.  We were not property developers, ours was a staged development intended to keep 202 Hereford maintained and economically viable for the next generation above all else.

When the Crown announced that our land was going to be seized for the so called green frame our initial reaction was disbelief.  But today we are announcing that along with many other CBD property owners we have been steamrolled by the Crown into accepting their offer for our land.  For an owner occupier with a sentimental attachment to our family's land we would never have sold our land at the low price offered by the Crown in the open market.  The idea that we are a willing seller is ridiculous as with only a single buyer and the threat of compulsory acquisition hanging over us we simply had no choice but to accept.

The ghostly outline of NZ Fine Prints' old gallery after demolition

Our main shopfront may be online but central to the DNA of our business is our love of NZ's visual culture and history, a sense of connectedness that is rooted in a specific geographic location.  The internet is ephemeral, a stock room piled high with packs of art prints on hundreds of shelves is tangible, even if a customer had never visited us they knew that behind the online gallery lay a family run business that had been around for a long time in one place.

Freed from a physical location (we may have been 2 1/2 years in Cashmere but it still feels transitional) we have renewed our focus on growing the online side of the business but despite the exponential growth that a website offers in terms of extra sales for our artists we are very sad that we are not being allowed to rebuild on our completely undamaged land (our place is being taken by a lawn).

It is businesses like NZ Fine Prints that make a central city different.  Taking our land away from us and imposing a top down plan on the rebuild of the CBD removes the entrepreneurial skills that the businesses around us had to make our block work with the hand the earthquakes dealt us.  NZ Fine Prints were also committed to the rebuild (trapped even) and prepared to invest more than a developer would based purely on the numbers as we had a sentimental attachment to making this patch of Christchurch awesome for our kids even if we didn't make much back financially for twenty years.

New location - look out for JK's kiwi sign
on Hackthorne Rd just past the school.

While we assess the options for a future site of a gallery, stockroom and warehousing we have made the decision to stay in our temporary premises (we are working from the basement of a classic Cashmere character house opening out into a superb garden with views across Christchurch, it's pretty nice here if a little quiet compared to the CBD) for at least another year while we wait and see what happens with the rebuild.

Customers looking for prints who are in Christchurch are always welcome to visit us, we now have nearly all prints back on one site thanks to some pretty innovative shelving (our prints are now double and triple bunked instead of luxuriating on a shelf of their own) although we are not carrying quite so many framed prints in stock framing to order within a few days instead.

The fact that the Crown will be packaging up our land for re-sale in the future without possibility of us buying it back at the same price seems really unfair and why businesses got such a harsh deal compared to property owners in residential neighbourhoods where the land was damaged (full payout of GV plus demolition costs) are the two things that we continue to feel bitter about. However we have decided to just give up and move on, lets hope the bureaucrats from Wellington flying down here each week know what they are doing with Christchurch.

NZ Fine Prints shocked to lose our land in CBD rebuild

The release yesterday of the blueprint for the rebuild of Christchurch's central business district is great news for Christchurch, it's going to be a world class city to live and work in. However personally and professionally this writer (Antony Ellis, co-owner of NZ Fine Prints) is  bitterly disappointed that our perfectly ok to rebuild on CBD land that has been the home of New Zealand Fine Prints for nearly fifty years is going to be taken from my family by the council to be part of the green frame to the east of the new smaller CBD.  Our plans to rebuild the largest specialist art print gallery in NZ are now replaced instead by, wait for it,  a lawn.

Temporary repairs following the first quake

Although people buying prints in Christchurch are actually a relatively small part of NZ Fine Prints' overall sales (our biggest markets are Auckland, Wellington and overseas (if you group sales to expatriate New Zealanders and gifts sent out of NZ together) we were excited about being part of the rebuild of the Latimer Square precinct, a gallery like NZ Fine Prints is just the kind of unique niche retail business that makes the central city different from a mall or business park and draws people into the city to shop. We never wanted to be stuck in some utilitarian distribution centre out by the airport, it might make logistical sense for an online retail business to be right next to CourierPost but you would be mad to choose to spend 1/3 of your daily hours in the bland monoculture of industrial buildings when you can be in the heart of a city instead.

The DNA of New Zealand Fine Prints online store with its "long tail" of every NZ art print available in stock has been shaped by our unchanging location of nearly fifty years in in Christchurch's CBD.  NZ's largest art print store is obviously now predominantly an online business but even in today's world of online shopping customers knew there was a physical gallery to visit, that they were buying from a family owned and New Zealand based company.  We were not one of the huge American websites offering photo library scenic shots as "NZ posters", nor were we one of several dozen websites who have come and gone offering NZ prints, posters, framing etc run from home and relying on others to drop ship the prints to customers on their behalf or simply being an affiliate site fulfilling sales via an affiliate program.

Far end of our gallery stockroom (following Sept 4's
earthquake the table was for sheltering from aftershocks)

Owning our own warehouses (originally built for the Zealandia Wax & Candle company in the 1880s) in the centre of the city for such a long time led to a wonderful experience for print buyers. The smell of paper when they walked through the door, the sight of racks and racks of prints with the balance of editions carefully wrapped in brown paper and stacked on top of the shelving sometimes up to the ceiling.  Labels with the names of NZ's most famous artists and printmakers, files of correspondence with the likes of Colin McCahon, Rita Angus or Gordon Walters. Packages of prints of famous paintings imported from the States, Europe and Australia and decades of catalogues charting the changing tastes of New Zealand art buyers. 

We sometimes joked we were the "print sellers of last resort, a buyer would be looking for an obscure NZ print, for example a particular early view of Auckland, and this would trigger a chain of phonecalls and emails to us from galleries and picture framers as the buyer rang around repeatedly trying to find the picture but everyone knowing if they hadn't managed to find it yet if anyone still had the print it would be somewhere in our warehouse in Christchurch. And yes, sometimes we knew we had the print a buyer wanted in stock - but took some hours digging to actually find it.  Given both the size of the NZ market and the need to publish reproduction prints in such large editions before digital printing we did a brisk trade in replacing prints for people because if a print was damaged we might still have prints from the very same edition published twenty years before that were in pristine brand new condition.

Until very recently even our print codes told you where they were located on a physical shelf (letter was the bay, number was the row), there are some amusing artifacts of this system still at Prints.co.nz where for instance code "B00" meant the pile on top of the B rack!

Sign for NZ Fine Prints going back up after Sept 4

Personally for this writer 202 Hereford St has been the stage and backdrop of my life, where my family has lived our personal and professional lives since before I was born.  It's the place where my sister and I would wait all day for Dad to finish "a couple of things at the office" before we could leave for our holiday, where in the late 1970s we would watch the weird green light coming out of a photo copier the size of small car for hours and where we would be employed to lick the backs of hundreds of envelopes in return for caramel milkshakes from the cafe two doors away. It's where my wife to be and I came up with the idea to use the new technology of colour photocopying to create catalogues of prints to send to picture framers, galleries and schools. And we photographed all the prints with a new fangled digital camera on the deck by the carpark when we decided to put our mail order catalogues online back in 1999.

The ghostly outline of our buildings following demolition

We have been excitedly planning our part of the rebuild and were looking forward to having a modern (i.e. warm!) warehouse, office and showroom in the heart of the new Christchurch. What an amazing process to actually live through we thought, to watch the city being rebuilt around us. We looked forward to being one of the first businesses to "re-colonise the inner city".

After 18 months of working from shipping containers and from a temporary office in Cashmere yesterday was supposed to be the day we could begin getting down to the detail of rebuilding our buildings we lost in the quakes, we simply wanted and expected to put our gallery back on our land and this compulsory land acquisition announcement is a cruel twist in the already traumatic journey we have been on since September 2010. We don't want to shift, we'd lost our buildings but want to rebuild on our land, our place to stand, NZ Prints' turangawaewae.

After the gift buying frenzy NZ Prints re-opens after the Xmas break

Xmas is always simply hectic. The sheer volume of gifts to be carefully packaged and dispatched on time not just in NZ but around the world makes it a real test of our systems. We make mistakes occasionally but our dispatch team will always try all alternatives to keep the customer (or gift recipient) happy if something has gone wrong. Xmas 2011 was Prints.co.nz's busiest ever with orders volumes up around twenty percent on 2010 albeit with a slightly lower average order amount meaning only a modest increase in print sales by dollar value.

After safely navigating through the Xmas gift season (our busiest time of the year) it was lovely to receive some complimentary emails that had been sent to our customer service team while New Zealand Fine Prints was closed for the Xmas/New Year holiday. Our favourite this year was the gift buyer who emailed us back "Thank you heaps. This picture brought tears of happiness to the recipient. Print is top quality, beautifully packaged with prompt delivery". Art is such a wonderful product to be selling - and to be spreading NZ's artistic culture onto walls everywhere with every print we sell is part of what gets us to work in the morning.

After a very eventful eighteen months in Christchurch with the ongoing earthquakes and our distribution and gallery moving from our home in Hereford St for nearly 50 years due to the quakes we look forward to 2012 being more benign for our staff and their families. This writer is looking forward to working on a series of NZ artist and print-maker profiles for NZ Art Print News (starting with controversial printmaker Lester Hall) and we are cataloguing our latest series of vintage NZ advertising posters, plus new prints from Dick Frizzell, Greg Straight, Fane Flaws and prints of landscape paintings by Wellington painter Ernest Papps.

And on a completely different note one of our staff snapped this incredible example of a NZ vernacular wooden picture frame while on holiday in the Marlborough Sounds. We are not sure if the framing style is one that would have a broad appeal in the framed wall art market today - but full marks for workmanship and dedication.

Christchurch earthquake photographer releases canvas prints

Gillian Needham, the Canterbury designer who took the famous photograph of the Christchurch skyline at the moment of the February 22nd earthquake, has signed an international distribution deal with photo library Getty Images and NZ art publisher Image Vault. This means that the famous Christchurch earthquake photograph is now available in a larger range of print formats including a stunning range of stretched (ready to hang) and un-stretched large canvas prints.

New Christchurch Earthquake Photo Canvas Print

Christchurch Earthquake - City Skyline From Cashmere 12:58pm February 22 2011   Photographer: Gillian Needham © 2011

Prices and size options for the new canvas prints are as follows:

600 x 200mm  $84.95 or $129.95 stretched (ie around a wooden stretcher frame ready to hang)
1000 x 330mm $219.95 or $299.95 stretched
1.5metre x .5metre $349.95 or $659.95 stretched

To place your order please call New Zealand Fine Prints on 0800 800 278.

New Zealand Fine Prints have just a few of the original giclee prints in stock of the earthquake image today and this print will be replaced in our catalogue by the Image Vault publication offset print which is in a slightly different size once stock runs out.

NZ's most dramatic art gallery opening!

A few weeks ago the stockroom of New Zealand's largest art print store was opened in dramatic fashion after the front wall of the 100 year old warehouse sustained structural damage during the Feb 22 Christchurch earthquake. Over the next 5 hours nearly 3 tonnes of prints were then successfully shifted to New Zealand Fine Prints' new location outside of the cordoned off CBD - at 139 Hackthorne Rd, Cashmere. 

Christchurch Earthquake Photographer Gilly Needham releases print

Christchurch Earthquake Photo by Gilly Needham

Gillian (Gilly) Needham has this week released a print of her famous photograph taken of dust clouds across Christchurch at the moment of the Feb 22nd earthquake. Fashion designer Needham was at home in Cashmere when the earthquake struck.  Her camera was sitting on the kitchen bench and she grabbed it to capture the scene in the city below.   A few hours later a low-resolution photo was on Facebook and it quickly went around the world to become one of the most enduring images of the Christchurch earthquake.  A large panorama shaped print of the photograph has now been printed and is available exclusively from Christchurch art print specialists New Zealand Fine Prints.

NZ Prints: Christchurch Earthquake Update 3

We are slowly getting back to normal service levels.  Special thanks to Paul Ryan, National Sales Manager at shelving specialists Hydestor New Zealand who are replacing our shelving at lightening speed (when we emailed photographs of our current shelving we were delighted to realise that Hydestor supplied our current racking over 30 years ago).  Paul had concept drawings to us within hours and rapidly re-configured the standard shelving set up to suit our new location and the latest standards for storage of fine art (it's all metal shelves now).  Sonoco NZ who supply all our poster rolls are doing a special run for us today in our standard sizes - an incredible help when we have virtually no mailing cylinders left.  If we ran out of these we can't ship a single art print.  Packaging House Auckland has delivered our special acid free tissue that we use to wrap prints already. Our incoming couriers are now delivering artists' prints to us again, our supply chain is cranking back into gear.  Thanks to artists such as Tony Ogle who are kindly drop-shipping prints directly to customers who need them immediately for gifts too.

Mary Lou Dolls by Matt Guild

Also a huge thanks to our customers who are continuing to buy prints from NZ's largest art print store over the past week. Especially to those who are patiently waiting for us to track or ship orders made around the time of the Christchurch quake and the customers waiting for framed prints that have been delayed for at least another two weeks.  Your patience during this difficult time is helping us concentrate on the key tasks as our business recovers from this event.

It was also a personal milestone for our catalogue manager when the first new print by a NZ artist to be catalogued for sale after the earthquake, Kiwiana specialist Matt Guild's "Mary Lou Dolls", was processed and uploaded to www.prints.co.nz earlier this afternoon (the first print in the prints for children collection we were working on at the moment the quake struck Christchurch last week). With a three month waiting list for new work this list doesn't get any shorter if Antony's not doing his job of cataloguing NZ's latest art prints for sale for a whole week.

NZ Prints - Christchurch Earthquake Update 2

From Monday 28th February NZ Prints staff are now working at our temporary office outside of the CBD.  All our computer systems are unaffected and running as normal.  Please note all NZ Fine Prints contact details such as phone numbers and email addresses have been diverted and have not changed - all NZ Prints contact details are listed here.  Artists and suppliers please re-direct all deliveries from 28th February to our temporary office at 139 Hackthorne Rd, Cashmere. 

We are currently unable to ship art print and poster orders due to our gallery being within the Christchurch CBD cordon and normal courier services being unavailable.  Thank you for your patience during this difficult time - we will start shipping prints and posters as soon as possible. 

NZ Prints - Christchurch Earthquake Update

All NZ Fine Prints staff and families are ok.  We are unable to ship orders due to our building being within the CBD cordon as well as disruption to normal post and courier services.

We appreciate the emails and calls of support from our artists, suppliers and customers throughout New Zealand and around the world.

Our focus is on our families and friends during this difficult time. Our staff will respond to emails and telephone messages in due course, please be patient at it will be at least several days before we can even begin to offer anything close to our normal levels of customer service. Please email us at enquiries@prints.co.nz or leave a message on 0800 800 278 and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

New signage for our Christchurch Gallery by kiwiana artist JK

Christchurch painter Jason Kelly is at the vanguard of the kiwiana art movement that is sweeping galleries and design stores across New Zealand. But we also knew that he had initially trained as a commercial sign writer - so who better to design and create the new signs for our gallery in Christchurch following the earthquake in September 2010 than JK?

We got progress emails from him saying things like "Are you happy for me to freestyle a little with timber choices and a have slightly different shape?" and then a few days later "I found some cool pieces of wood and metal work yesterday…I hope you won't mind".  We began to wonder if Jason was heading off on one of his quirky tangents but he assured us we would appreciate the recycled bed head pieces in the final sign/artwork!

The final design was unveiled this morning at 202 Hereford and we are delighted with our new signage that not only makes it a lot easier to find our store but subtly reminds visitors that although we are NZ's largest online art retailer we have been in the art print business for nearly five decades.

Talk by Christchurch Art Critic Dennis Dutton

This is a superbly illustrated lecture from Christchurch art theorist Dennis Dutton, author of "The Art Instinct" in collaboration with animator Andrew Par.  In this talk Dutton discusses the role of beauty in art from a Darwinian perspective.

Jason Kelly & Image Vault release Christchurch Earthquake Canvas Print

Jason Kelly: Credit Kirk Hargreaves/ The Press

Jason Kelly and art print publisher Image Vault have combined to commemorate the recent Christchurch earthquake with a new print on canvas called SevenPointOne.  In the announcement of this special new print today the artist writes "The date of September 4th 2010 will long remain in the collective memory of Cantabrians. In spite of all the fear, trauma and destruction the earthquake caused, Christchurch as a city pulled together, and comforted and supported those most severely affected. For most of us, as the quakes diminish, we survey the cracks and and start to move on with our lives. However, many residents are still badly affected, requiring both psychological and financial support as they try to pick up the pieces torn so suddenly and violently asunder."

In response to the devastation Jason Kelly - who is one of Image Vault’s best-selling artists - has generously donated a painting which will be auctioned with all the proceeds going to the Christchurch's Mayoral Relief Fund (see picture of Jason Kelly and his earthquake painting "SevenPointOne" above). According to Image Vault's press release today "With his ever quirky take Jason has created an artwork which commemorates September 4th and salutes the spirit of our community." For the painting's "canvas" Kelly recycled a piece of New Zealand beech that was part of a door damaged in a central city building during the September quake.

Image Vault is simultaneously releasing prints of the painting on canvas in three sizes with 20% of all proceeds going to the Mayoral Earthquake relief fund.  Kelly has asked that his entire royalty be donated, and Image Vault is matching his contribution.

The painting's poem reads

Christchurch's Way:
There came a day
The earth did say
I've had enough
of this fault's fray
So up it lift
A Christchurch rift
A Seven Point One
Of rattle and tip
Still here we are
Too strong to split.

New Zealand Prints - Delivery & Customer Service back to normal after Christchurch Quake

All new art print orders placed via phone or Prints.co.nz have been shipping as per normal since Friday 10th September. Thank you to our dedicated warehouse team who have worked over the weekend to catch up on the backlog of orders placed after Saturday's earthquake, the last of which were delivered to the couriers at 1pm today.   An especially big thank you to all our customers who have been so patient with the unavoidable late delivery of their prints & gifts during the past very difficult week as we worked to stabilise the damaged gallery exterior to make it safe for our warehouse staff to pack your orders.

Picture framing delayed by last week's quake is due to be completed by Wednesday and delivered to customers throughout New Zealand by Friday 17th September.

All of us at New Zealand Fine Prints would also like to thank the owners of the neighbouring properties in Hereford St - Kay Fisher of 198,  Lewis & Barrow, Joe's Garage, Miles Construction and Calendar Girls who gave us alternative safe access to our gallery via Liverpool St across their properties without question.  Also thanks to Colliers International & Canterbury Development Corporation who allowed our engineers and construction team access to their carpark to place the supports for the rear wall of the gallery.  And to Ben & the guys at Leigh's Construction who managed to place four huge supportive braces and steel beams into our building (see the photo!) without damaging a single artwork - you are amazing!

NZ Prints - Christchurch Earthquake Update

As of Wednesday 8 September New Zealand Fine Prints is up and running from temporary offices out of the inner city.  You can contact us via our usual telephone numbers and email is also working again. Initial emergency stabilisation work on the gallery and adjacent building is due to be finally completed within hours. Huge thanks to our engineers, Anne MacKenzie of Buildgreen who was there for us when we needed it the most in the first few hours,  John Tait from Lewis Bradford and the guys at Leighs Construction. Also big thanks to our near neigbours in Hereford St Arrow International whose team dealt with the immediate dangers from the collapsing gables and put a temporary cover over the holes just after the initial quake to help keep all our thousands of prints snug and dry.

Our first post-quake shipping day is not going to be set until we are certain our staff are going to be safe in and around our gallery - especially in light of the continual aftershocks that have brought down already unstable buildings across the city today.  We are contacting all customers individually, please be patient while we arrange delivery of your orders made since Saturday's earthquake. We expect to update the revised shipping date Thursday around 3pm.  All NZ Post and CourierPost services are running again, we just have to be absolutely sure our gallery is safe for staff working to send out your order.