Mailing dates for Xmas gifts 2017

From now until Christmas is the busiest time of the year sales wise for NZ Fine Prints. Art prints are perennially popular Xmas gifts and making sure we deliver on time for Xmas around the world and throughout NZ has been something we have been doing for 50 years!!

This Christmas falls awkwardly for last minute gift buying being on a Monday means no deliveries Xmas Eve (Sunday) so our cut off dates are generally a day or two earlier than normal.

Official mailing dates are below, these apply to our standard delivery service. There may be other delivery options available outside of our standard service/pricing so if you think you are running out of time please call us on 0800 800 278 in the lead up to Xmas, we may be able to work something out for you.

NZ Fine Prints Christmas Mailing Dates for 2017 are as follows:

Delivery worldwide at our standard rate of just $NZ15 (for any number of prints):

Australia

Please order your gifts by Wednesday 6th December 2017

UK & Europe, East Asia, North America & South Pacific

Please order your gifts by Friday 1st December 2017

Rest of World

Order Xmas gifts by Wednesday 29th November 2017

Xmas Delivery to NZ Addresses

Standard Delivery for $NZ6 (for any number of prints)

We need to have your orders for prints being delivered as gifts for Xmas by 3pm Tuesday 19th December 2017

Deadline for next day courier delivery via CourierPost with guaranteed delivery for Xmas day is 3pm Wednesday 20th December 2017

Framed Prints - please order 10 working days before these mailing dates to ensure we can deliver by Christmas.

Gift Vouchers

NZ Prints also deliver gift vouchers by mail to NZ addresses if ordered by 20 December - and email gift vouchers are even being purchased on Xmas day itself and delivered instantly around the world. Now that is last minute Christmas shopping!

Shipping & Delivery Updates

As we get closer to Xmas we will update any delays or known issues with Xmas delivery on our shipping & delivery page.

Ends of lines - endangered prints about to sell out

"Boat at the Wharf" by Stanley Palmer
(4 prints left today)

I'm writing about our "endangered prints" collection this month because we have had an unusually high number of prints going into this ends of line category in the past few weeks (a few dozen as opposed to a handful every month or so).  This is probably due to the life cycle of the large number of prints published about 10 years back, when there was a structural shift in the market from artists printing reproductions to be on-sold by distributors to a few commercial publishers printing many titles from a single artist on a royalty basis.  There was a natural limit to this market (the size of NZ means there may only be a few hundred people who want a particular scene on the wall, and once they have it they aren't going to buy it again) so the slightly less popular titles from these ranges are not being re-printed and are now selling out.

Probably the print we will be saddest to see go is the beautiful large reproduction of Ralph Hotere's painting "Dawn/Water Painting".  This was originally published by the Christchurch Art Gallery to co-inside with a survey exhibition of Hotere's paintings while he was still alive (as an aside at times like this often a print is not made for strictly commercial reasons, the artist royalty of several thousand dollars will be paid up-front as a sweetener to get the artist's support to show works from their collection).  We have sold this print for many years and it is exactly what we believe in, a good quality reasonably priced art print by a top shelf NZ artist.  It probably will never be re-printed, so our advice to Hotere fans is please buy it today!

Why is this a thing?  It really has a lot to do with the size of the market for prints

Margaret Stoddart "Violets" (Last 2)

of NZ scenes or prints by NZ artists. Often an initial printing of a few hundred prints will be enough to satisfy demand.  The print may be open edition but the economic incentive to re-print is similar to the book industry, there will only be a second run if demand is there.  So, like books, prints simply go "out of print", and are only available on the second hand market.  This does not mean that their value will increase markedly if they are a reproduction of an original artwork but it does somewhat preserve their value around the purchase price as in good condition a print still has exactly the same appeal to a buyer even if it is not brand new (unlike say clothing).

This reality has changed a bit over the past decade as digital short run printing has become more prevalent, digital printing is ideally suited to a small market albeit at the disadvantage that unit costs do not decline dramatically as they do for offset lithography meaning prices are higher (we have seen the average cost of a large art print rise from around $NZ 50 to between $NZ 70-80 over the same period with the amount paid to the artist staying relatively static as the per unit printing cost is the main component in the cost increase (along with a small increase in GST).

So we have three main drivers for prints ending up in our "endangered prints" collection.

1. Print runs selling out.  A publisher, artist or gallery prints a few hundred prints and when they are sold out either customer demand is not there to re-print, or it was a one-off event such as a touring show/retrospective exhibition.

2. Prints were limited edition.  This is a different category altogether, particularly for original prints (where the prints are multiple artworks, they are not copies of another art form such as a painting) but also for reproductions printed in a smaller number, usually signed and numbered by the artist. These have a scarcity value as well as a decorative value and are not intended to be available over a longer period than a few years at most.  Established printmakers like Tony Ogle or Dick Frizzell tend to keep a balance between editions selling out and new work, with broadly the same number coming out each year as sell out - which shows that the supply and demand for their work is in balance.  It always rings alarm bells for us at the investment end of the art print market when initially successful artists with sold out editions begin increasing editions sizes, then the number of new editions each year, this is a slippery slope to beyond the pale re-printing under the guise of "roman numeral" editions etc!

3. Prints produced by commercial publishers using digital printing which theoretically could stay in print forever but are deleted by the publisher.  This is for two reasons. Firstly sales may not justify the space in sales reps catalogues or in administrative overhead (eg calculating artist royalties), one well known NZ publisher and distributor has a rule that if less than four prints a year are being sold they will delete the product line.  Secondly the artist's contract may not be renewed.  Contracts to make prints range from 1 to 3 years, unlike with offset printing where artist's work would be available potentially for years after the contract had lapsed due to a clause that allowed the publisher time to sell all printed stock with digital printing the lower stock inventories on hand means a publisher may only keep a month or two's supply on hand.

Shane Cotton Print - last one!

As soon as we know a print is running out (no firm and fast rule but less than 20 in stock is usually a trigger) we'll start keeping an eye on stock on hand.  When we are down to a number that is about what we would sell in a couple of months we pop the prints into our endangered gallery.  We also update our Facebook and Twitter accounts, and once a year we do a mail out to every one on our mailing list with every NZ print that is running low, so our special bunch of subscribers never miss out on a print they like but hadn't quite got around to ordering.

One final thought, selling prints online makes it so much easier to keep our catalogue up to date which is a blessing! Unlike our printed mail order catalogue which gradually becomes inaccurate regarding availability (and sometimes price) over the course of its useful life we can remove prints as easily as checking a box at the back of prints.co.nz.

Lindauer print found in US antique shop with background story about this famous painting

One of the interesting aspects of working at a business with a high profile online is the "unpaid helpdesk" kind of enquiries that flow in via email, over the phone and increasingly through Facebook messenger as well.  These are the enquiries that come to us when a NZ artwork is discovered, about to be sold, or just researched over the internet to find out a bit more about the print or artist.  We deflect enquiries about values of paintings to the right auctioneer for the quality of work/artist and can usually help if a person is trying to work out if an artwork is a painting or a print (what they paid for it is a good place to start!).

Most of these enquiries will not lead to a sale but there doesn't seem too much harm in helping out, hopefully the next time they are thinking about prints they will think of New Zealand Fine Prints.

We got a different kind of enquiry over the weekend from the States.  There a couple of kiwis had discovered a Lindauer maori portrait print in an antique store and they were keen to know if it had originally been sold by us.  What was cool about their enquiry however was that they also emailed a photograph of the label on the reverse of the framed print which had a very well researched blurb about the original painting, the artist and the subject (Rewi Manga Maniopoto) which contained much that was new to us despite having stocked this print for many years. Fascinating to learn that the cloak he is wearing is decorated with the tail hair of specially reared dogs that slept on clean mats to "keep their tails as white as possible"!

It was great to be able to say that we probably sold the print some time over the past 50 years and to thank them for sending us the extra information about this portrait, and that we would put this online for other people interested in this famous portrait to learn more about it:

Rewi Manga Maniopoto

Print of Lindauer's Painting

Rewi Manga Maniapoto, born between  l815 and 1820, was descended from Hioturoa, navigator of the ancestral canoe Tainui, and was an ariki of the Ngati Maniapoto. His tribal lands lay to the south of the Waikato tribe, in the rugged territory of the Waipa and Puniu rivers. From his boyhood, Rewi Manga was fully engaged with the Ngati Maniapoto in inter-tribal warfare.

Rewi Manga is remembered as one of the most popular fighting chiefs of the Maori King Movement. It was he, for instance, who encouraged the participation of Ngati Maniapoto and Waikato people in the Taranaki controversy, ignoring the opposition of the Maori King and Wiremu Tamehana. Rewi and his Ngati Maniapoto people also acted unilaterally in their bid to clear European authority out of the Waikato when they took possession of the Court, the schoolroom and the printing press of John Gorst, the Civil Commissioner of the district, at Te Awamutu.

Rewi's most celebrated action in the Waikato conflict was his last-ditch defence of the Orakau Pa in the heart of Ngati Maniapoto country, in March 1864. The gallantry of that defence has passed into legend. A contemporary report of the event provides a tribute to Rewi Manga's leadership of the federated tribes of the Waikato and Ngati Maniapoto, the Tuhoe of the Urewera, the Ngati Raukawa and Ngati Kahungunu of Hawke's Bay:

No human situation can be conceived more desperate or more hopeless   their lands gone, their race melting away like snow before the sun, and now their own turn come at fast; with enemies surrounding them on all sides . . . this is the last peace and surrender: hoa, ka whawhai tonu ahau ki a koe, ake' (Friend, I shall fight against you for ever and ever). 

In the years following the end of the Waikato war, the Ngati Maniapoto, led by Rewi Manga, together with the Maori King, Tawhiao Matutaera Potatau Te Wherowhero, encouraged Te Kooti to take up the work of routing the European settlers from the land. However, Rewi Manga did eventually renounce his support of Te Kooti in return for the assurances of the government that there would be no further military' operations in the King's territory.

Rewi Manga lived until 1894, through the period which saw the enactment of confiscation and the further decimation of the Maori population.

Lindauer's portrait depicts Rewi Manga in his prime, proudly displaying symbols of his chiefly power, and with full facial moko and huia feathers. He holds a hoeroa, a rare weapon carved from the- lower jaw bone of the sperm whale. His dogskin cloak, a kahu waero, was the most highly prized type of the Classical period. It is a dress mat like a korowai, but so thickly covered with strips of white dogstail that the kaupapa of the cloak is completely concealed by the long-haired bushy tails. This type of cloak was made by fastening strips of tail at one border of the mat, hanging loosely to form a heavy fringe. On the body of the mat, strips were placed along the warp and secured by the weft threads.

Colenso has left a record of the high value of this type of cloak, describing in particular the dogs from which the tails were obtained:

White haired dogs were greatly prized, and were taken the greatest possible care of: They slept in a house on clean mats, so that their precious tails should he kept as white as possible. Their tails were curiously and regularly shaved, and the hair preserved for ornamental use. 

Back to school

Today marks the start of the school term, a bittersweet time where the kids head back to a new year of learning and parents readjust to having no children around. 2016/17 was a great holiday but after six weeks off both kids and parents are ready for the school term to begin.

The cost in economic terms of NZ's long summer school holiday must be quite large, perhaps offset in GDP terms by increased spending on travel, accomodation and holiday activities but in terms of a productivity hit for a family run business such as NZ Fine Prints the school holidays are a bit of a trial. Business is reduced to the bare minimum of getting prints shipped out the door, there is no spare time for planning, cataloguing or dealing with artists - anything outside of the ordinary is pushed forward into late January when we are back at work without the children under foot.  Looking back the family memories of the holidays are will be a big bunch of good times but we have really tried the patience of some customers along the way - but what alternative there is to tag team parenting reduced to part time hours over the school holidays eludes me.

Glenn Jones' print of coloured
crayons labeled in te reo Maori

Back to school is also part of what NZ Fine Prints are doing in 2017.  Pre-internet we had a division of our company devoted to supplying NZ schools with art education materials, particularly large colour reproductions of famous paintings.  This part of our business has reduced to a fraction of what it was now that teachers can access colour images over the internet for classroom use, basically we ended up selling school teachers with discounted prints for their homes rather than providing educational resources for the classroom!

We still think that kids growing up should be surrounded with good quality prints of paintings that are more than the purely decorative, to learn about art history and to appreciate what a rich visual culture has been created by artists over the past 500 years but we no longer import a purely educationally focussed range of prints.

Posters and prints will always be on walls of kiwi kids classrooms so we are expanding the prints for children/kids art collection in 2017 to include educational posters such as NZ and world maps (including NZ map posters in Te Reo Maori), and we're adding some great kiwiana ABC posters for the pre-school learners as well.

Educational Posters for NZ kids

Growing up with prints of famous paintings on the walls at home should be considered part of our parental responsibility of bringing up kiwi kids who are culturally well-rounded. There is something about living alongside famous artworks everyday that makes them not just familiar but understood. Seeing a print everyday is a different and more resonant level of engagement than swiping through images from the internet, where initial impact is all important rather than a lingering contemplation.

However art education prints are not the only wall art available for kids rooms, kiwiana is big too as it features icons of kiwi childhood like buzzy bees, jet planes and playground rocket ships, often now remixed into something more than just nostalgic Pakeha recycling, what we are calling post or neo kiwiana where the artistic conversation with NZ's past moves beyond just nostalgia and the appropriation of commercial motifs.

NZ Map in the Maori language
Educational poster for 4-12 year olds

The kiwiana ABC poster released a few years ago has made us realise that our range of educational posters should not just be limited to art education as we all like to put some basic learning resources on the walls when the kids are young, maps in the bathroom, a counting poster by the potty in our family's case. When we researched the publishers selling educational posters designed for NZ children we realised that with about twenty titles specifically made for kiwi parents to buy we could add a purely educational strand to our collection of kid orientated wall art pretty easily. Thanks to publishers like Huia we now have the first of these posters arriving in our kids collection, starting with two cool new NZ and world maps in Te Reo by Wellington artist, designer and illustrator Josh Morgan.

I will be adding pictures and links to this article shortly, writing this away from the office in the midst of the drizzliest school holidays in living memory and my kids only have so much tolerance for Dad using the iPad for work (but expect me to leave them in total peace if it is their turn on devices!).

And here we have the illustration that was supposed to accompany this post "Toko Whenua: Aotearoa", a large (A1 size) poster of NZ with all place names and places of interest in te reo Maori.  It's a fun learning resource for families, schools and pre-schools with eye catching illustrations designed to inspire kiwi children to learn more about the country they live in and increase their Maori language skills as the name and talk about the features of different places.

Stanford Arts closes - end of an era for NZ art print distributor

For the last twenty years the name Stanford Harts/Arts has been part of the art print distribution scene here in NZ.

Originally this wholesale art print distribution business - publishing the "N.Z. Art Prints" New Zealand prints catalogue of kiwi artists - operated from Onehunga in Auckland, part of a larger enterprise "Stanford Arts" that supplied framing supplies, picture mouldings and framing equipment to the picture framing trade throughout NZ.  By the turn of the century Stanford Arts had two branches when another warehouse was opened in Christchurch.  The print distribution moved down to Christchurch and was run by Leanne Haglund, at the time of this shift we welcomed having another distributor so close by to us, just a couple of blocks away from we were located pre-earthquakes in Hereford St.

Popular "Auckland Essence" Print distributed by Stanford Arts

When international framing manufacturer and distributor Larsen Juhl purchased Stanford Harts' NZ operations the wholesale art print distribution business did not fit with the plans of the new corporate owners.  The print department was spun out as a separate business in 2007 and sold to Auckland businesswoman Janet Dalton who renamed the business Stanford Arts (cleverly dropping the H).

Janet had 22 years in the framing industry including owning her own picture framing shop for the 12 years prior to purchasing the print department from Larsen Juhl.  She continued to import on indent from a wide variety of art print publishers such as Bruce McGaw and Rosensteils, as well as wholesaling a growing stable of NZ artists such as Timo Design (Timo Rannali), Rob McGregor and Ingrid Banwell, an Auckland artists whose top selling print features in this post.  Janet was very adept at collating large numbers of different prints from many different suppliers into her weekly deliveries to NZ Fine Prints and it was with some sadness that we heard she planned to close her business in order to retire at the end of 2015.

We have managed, with Janet's kind assistance, to contact nearly all the artists whose prints NZ Fine Prints stock via Stanford Arts and look forward to continuing to make these titles available for purchase both through our mail order catalogues and online.  Unfortunately a small number of art print titles will have to be deleted in due course as stock is no longer available, we'll be posting these prints in our endangered gallery.

Picture framers looking for prints previously wholesaled by Stanford Arts are welcome to get in touch as we may be able to supply prints to them from our stock at trade prices now we are dealing directly with the artists concerned.

Here at NZ Fine Prints we'd like to take this opportunity to wish Janet a long and happy retirement, with more time to travel both here and abroad!

Thorndon Fine Prints - Publisher of Early NZ Maps & Evelyn Page Prints

We were sad to hear of the recent death of Sebastian Page.  The founder of Wellington's Thorndon Fine Prints had let us know that he was selling the business due to ill-health a few months ago.  In my role as the catalogue manager for NZ Fine Prints I have been purchasing from Thorndon from the time I first graduated from Otago and joined our family's business.  Seb was a great person to deal with, always packaging the prints with care and getting them to us on time.  In later years I would always get a phone call letting me know when he and Marcia (of Page Blackie Gallery) were heading off on their winter holiday so I could make sure we had enough of the ever popular Thorndon "Cook's Map of NZ" on hand until their return.  Oh how envious I was as we headed into another Christchurch winter!

Map of NZ and the Pacific by Zatta based on Cook's charts

Our gallery has now purchased the remaining stock of fine art prints, maps and charts published by Thorndon Fine Prints.  Alongside all the titles we have promoted previously (like this map of the Pacific by Zatta) there are some additional prints that we now have for sale for the first time - in a couple of cases these are duplicates of images published previously by Avon Fine Prints such as the Cassini map based on Captain Cook's charts that we hadn't seen the need to double up on previously - but there are also some really well priced smaller prints from Buller's "Birds of NZ" and a couple of fine NZ botanical prints such as this print of Pohutukawa (historically interesting as it has an earlier spelling of Pohutukawa and is titled Metrosideros Tomentosa rather than the modern nomenclature of Metrosideros Excelsa) by 19th century NZ botancial artist Sarah Featon.

The story of Thorndon Fine Prints was detailed in some of the brochures that we received with the prints and worth recounting to make sure Seb Page's contribution to art print publishing in NZ is long remembered.

"In 1990, inspired by an awakening of interest in historical New Zealand, and particularly in the era of exploration and discovery, Thorndon Fine Prints issued two fine replicas of the most collectable of antique New Zealand maps, Cook's Chart of New Zealand, originally published in 1772, and the map of colonial settlement published in 1845.  Subsequently the range has been extended to include the most popular maps and prints relating to New Zealand and Pacific history, including some of the most decorative images of discovery, settlement and natural history, by the acclaimed artists of the time.  All reproductions are printed on the finest quality papers and presented with well-researched documentation."

Evelyn Page Prints from Thorndon Fine Prints

Seb Page was the son of artist Evelyn Page.  One of NZ's most celebrated artists Evelyn Page's

Evelyn Page on the
cover of "Art New Zealand"

vibrant paintings of nudes and still-life are among the most memorable images in New Zealand art of the twentieth century.  Thorndon Fine Prints began their publishing relationship with the Evelyn Page Estate in 2002 with their limited edition print release "Why Go To the Riveria? - Oriental Bay, Wellington".  The unprecedented success of this inaugural publication led to the inclusion of two more images by Evelyn Page in the Thorndon Fine Prints portfolio the following year.   Exclusive to Thorndon Fine Prints they were reproduced on the finest quality paper using UV resistant inks.

We are delighted to stock the three prints exclusively available from Thorndon alongside the Christchurch Art Gallery published print of Summer Morn (their edition of the every popular "Pohutukawa Rina" is unfortunately currently out of print while the gallery is closed).

2014 - Art Print Market Review

Year of the Bird in NZ Art

2014 was the year of the bird in NZ prints.  The re-issued Native Birds of New Zealand poster nearly outsold "Mickey to Tiki", re-printed colour plates from Buller's Birds sold briskly alongside a menagerie of avian art from contemporary NZ artists.  Tui are definitely the new Nikau! And by the end of the year another big trend was shaping up - the circular print.  Yes, round is going to be a thing in 2015 - there were even artists so on trend they combined both with round prints of birds!

Native Birds of NZ
Poster

Publication News

The other exciting new prints published over 2014 included the first new print of a classic abstract Koru painting by Gordon Walters for a decade, the ongoing re-release of NZ's most popular artist Dick Frizzell's back catalogue as open edition prints, the expansion of the number of re-prints of genuine vintage posters alongside a huge number of new limited editions by NZ artists, especially the stunning work of veteran artist Michael Smither.  We also saw new prints of paintings by blue chip NZ artists like Hammond, Hotere and McCahon.  In 2013's art market review we said that tiki were going to evolve further and they certainly have, it's such an exciting area of NZ art we have now created a tiki category that numbered just on fifty different prints by the end of 2014.

Trends

The word picture/bus blind/eye chart has collapsed into a custom printed word association game that shows off the customisation potential of digital printing - editions of one for Kev & Julie's Wedding etc - think of 10 words and make sure you spell the names right. There are some good business models for printers in this now but the mainstream publishers are all saying that the place names bus blind and eye chart style typographical print has run its course.

One other change we have noticed is how remixed vintage style images are replacing straight photographic souvenirs like postcards. And yes, we are still waiting for the great NZ photography range to replace the stalwart poster selection published by Craig Potton Publishing a very long time ago.

Street art went mainstream in 2014, the market for Banksy prints and posters was by the end of the year a free-for-all, even the Warehouse imported some particularly grainy posters to flog through their daily deals site using our high quality offset prints (at the not exactly exorbitant $39.95) as the "why pay this much" tag.  The answer is of course that you get what you pay for, good quality paper stock, long life ink and perfect colour fidelity.  And in the case of some prints we saw, no pixelation either!  Over the Xmas holidays this writer even spotted an already discarded derivative canvas graffiti art style print in a provincial second hand shop, cast off with the speed of a poster of last year's boy band.  Great for business if people turn over their artworks so quickly, but we genuinely think the best value is purchasing an artwork that you will love for decades, the cost per view is quite high even if it's a cheap print if you buy something that can't sustain your interest much beyond the initial viewing.

What's in Store for 2015?

We think one of the artists to watch in 2015 will be Glenn Jones, he's pushing kiwiana in new directions and has quickly built up good distribution for his artwork through stores.  Jason Kelly is now on the same production train as Dick Frizzell, it would be great to see his previous success revisited as his "Kiwi As" series struck a chord with nearly everyone without looking like "made for tourists" kiwiana.

NZ WWII
Propaganda Poster

The 100th Anzac day could be the catalyst for sales of vintage war posters, recruitment posters and propaganda posters.  But whether they should be promoted beyond the walls of the social studies department is an interesting debate.

Custom printing of reproduction prints will be on the rise in 2015 but still faces issues around copyright, royalties, unit costs and complexity at the customer end. The expectation we hear from some of our customers is that the print retailer can simply print images off the internet, asking could they buy, for example Banksy's "Girl with Balloons" with the background wall on canvas one metre square. Although technically possible to print reproductions of art works on demand like this publishers still carry stock in standard sizes as the work involved in printing a single image still makes a print run of 10 more economically feasible because the set up times are averaged across more than one print.  In the case of the Banksy prints and posters we are still ordering physical stock from publishers in the UK that is air freighted to NZ at a price lower than custom printing here in NZ.

Large print runs done offset will continue to be a better value proposition than bespoke printing for reproductions for popular artists and famous paintings.  Local publishers using giclee or inkjet printing still backorder retail orders until they can print a batch of the same image and size if possible.

What we'd love to see in 2015? Some great new prints featuring NZ's favourite sports!  Like finding the perfect view of Christchurch (unlike Auckland with Rangitoto or Wellington's hillsides of wooden houses) this has been attempted a few times (for instance David John's "Changing Room" series of Julia Drake's "not quite the All Blacks" prints around the time of the 2008 World Cup).  But for a country passionate about sport we have pretty much had to make do with just alcohol sponsored free posters of rugby teams or those framed jerseys that end up in the back of the wardrobe after the school fundraiser for too long.   Our art should reflect what we care about and although sport resonates with New Zealanders there are simply not enough artworks that celebrate our sporting traditions to meet demand.

Vintage NZ Letterpress

Letterpress Poster for "Maori Race Meeting"

Vintage Cobb & Co Advertisement

Early NZ letterpress prints & posters have always caught my eye. They show a skill in execution and composition using a very hands on printing process so at odds with the computer driven designs of today. As decoration they are whimsical, sometimes serious, and even toe curlingly cringemaking - but always fascinating historical content to start a conversation. What's not to like!

We have several "new" letterpress prints in stock, although they are re-prints of the original vintage designs they are authentic letterpress posters, cold type assembled by hand, which makes them a pretty sincere reproduction of the rare original posters which can now only be found in NZ museums or collections like those at the Turnbull and Hocken Libraries.

2013 - NZ Art Print Market Review

During the gift buying season that marks the end of another year all publishing and cataloguing of new prints screeches to a halt while we focus on simply getting the artworks out the door and delivered in time for Christmas.  So just before we descend into the busiest time of the year our catalogue manager takes a look back at 2013.  In this post Antony Ellis reviews the NZ art print market in 2013 from a trends and sales perspective to highlight the significant milestones of the year from our position as NZ’s largest art print retailer.

Art Print Trends during 2013

The best selling print for 2013 in NZ will either be Frizzell's  Mickey to Tiki (yet again) or the wonderful new “Native Birds of NZ” Poster based on the illustrations of J G Keulemans (the artist who illustrated Buller’s Birds of NZ).  The most popular categories of prints overall were Kiwiana and vintage posters but the street art collection is showing the steepest rise in traffic (it was a big year for Banksy with his unofficial New York residency - we also have finally secured a reliable supplier of Banksy prints direct from the UK so had a lot more street art prints to choose from by the end of the year).  The Native birds poster also boosted the popularity of native NZ birds as a theme (it’s a toss up between tikis and birds as the favourite subject of 2013), alongside perennial favourites, the NZ landscape and Coastal & Sea Views.

We have noticed one surprising drop in sales - that of prints on canvas.  Even though we include the value of both unstretched and stretched (mounted) canvases in this sales category (framing of prints on paper we measure as separate line item) sales of prints on canvas are down by nearly twenty percent on 2012.  It’s definitely not the end of the canvas trend full stop but it does point to canvas prints being part of the wall art mix rather than a replacement for reproductions on paper that some people in the industry were predicting.  Picture framers will be relieved if the trend for frameless (gallery wrap) canvas prints starts to abate.  At the lower end of the market (in art industry parlance, non “brand name” artists) the unexpected competition with hand painted canvas prints at rock bottom prices from China being may have hastened the end of generic designs on canvas that were stocked in vast numbers at new outlets for prints such as furniture shops and the bubble like profusion of “design” and “gift” stores that popped up throughout NZ over the last decade.

Publishing News: Prints, posters & limited editions new in 2013

New prints during the year started with us rounding out the range of reproductions of paintings from “gallery” or “fine art” artists not from NZ.  The strength of the NZ dollar against the US dollar and the Euro has made purchasing from overseas art publishers a much more pleasant experience.  We listed many more large art posters (usually the standard US 3 foot by 2 foot size) at prices between $NZ24.95 - $NZ29.95, by famous artists like Klimt, Monet, Mucha, Dali and Kandinsky as well as a good selection of new prints in various formats (such as the Whaam! diptych from pop artist Roy Lichtenstein).  After a few years building up our range of indigenous NZ vintage posters we also filled out the vintage range with new titles focussed around our food and drink category (NZ designers of the vintage period did concentrate on travel and tourism, if you want vintage wine and beer advertisements these tend to be French or Italian).  The top selling print by a non-NZ artist is still the “Holiday on Wheels” print by Boulanger but easily the most popular artist by total sales was street artist Banksy.

Also added were new reproduction prints by significant NZ artists like C F Goldie, Michael Illingworth, Colin McCahon and Bill Hammond.  Our photography selection extended with a large series of large format panoramic posters by photographer Richard Hume.  The biggest collective launch of NZ prints came right at the end of the year with the series of reasonably priced Dick Frizzell reproductions of some of his most well-known silkscreen prints and paintings, images such as Popduck, Grocer with Moko and Big Kiss.

NZ original printmakers like Michael Smither, Tony Ogle were busy during 2013 and limited edition prints from contemporary artists (and now also increasingly from designers/illustrators) such as Greg Straight, Jane Puckey, Susan Haywood Smith and Alec Tayler were listed for the first time.

New NZ Fine Prints Catalogue

The launch of our 2014 catalogue of “Fine Art Prints, Posters & Limited Editions” was a huge effort behind the scenes. Due to the earthquake disruption we skipped an update in 2011.  We must have been a bit rusty as there were more than the usual array of problems (colour matching, making the captions fit underneath every image and checking for typos) publishing this year’s catalogue (the entire first printing was recycled after the complete run was printed without the proof being signed off) so it was relief to see the pallet of brand new catalogues arrive at our warehouse even if they were six weeks late.  The way the auction houses manage to produce their beautiful catalogues of paintings every few weeks throughout the year (especially the dizzy array of designs from Art & Object) is astonishing to contemplate.

NZ Art Print Market Predictions for 2014

1. We will see prints becoming a little less pop and a bit more street.  
2. NZ vintage will no longer be seen as hot "trend" (the increase in supply of titles was responsible for the rise in profile of this category more than it simply being in fashion) but will become an enduring part of the market like it is in other countries. 
3. There will be more “modern vintage”, contemporary prints in a retro style hopefully more representative of modern NZ society than the increasingly simplistic “Kiwiana” style images that are too often simply watered down copies of more and more obscure nostalgic objects from our collective past. 
4. Dick Frizzell will continue to be the top selling NZ artist by overall print sales and by value, with a new and enthusiastic publisher by his side planning to print dozens of new prints alongside new silkscreen editions we’d be foolish to call the end of his reign as NZ’s most commercially successful artist and printmaker. 
5. Due to overwhelming demand we’ll be selling more prints pre-framed in our standard timeless framing styles as we slowly roll this out across all of Prints.co.nz but we still support the role of the custom picture framer as being a vital partnership in the enduring story of a business such as NZ Fine Prints.

Brilliant NZ Native Birds Poster published by Te Papa Press

"Native Birds of New Zealand" Poster | Image Credit: Te Papa Press

When Geoff Norman, author of "Buller's Birds of New Zealand: The Complete Works of JG Keulemans", spotted a framed poster of "Native Birds of New Zealand" at his friend Jock Phillip's place (Jock's a well known NZ historian and editor of "Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand") he realised this could be the poster that Te Papa Press were looking for to accompany the publication of his award winning book.

It was the perfect poster to accompany his book's launch because the birds in the poster are based on the artwork of JG Keulemans, illustrator of Walter Buller's "A History of the Birds of New Zealand".

The Book
Norman's book "Buller's Birds of New Zealand: The Complete Work of JG Keulemans" (already on its second printing and currently available from bookstores and Te Papa Store) included the complete set of 95 artworks from both editions of ‘A History of the Birds of New Zealand’ by Walter Buller and the subsequent supplement. In the book each bird painting is accompanied by extracts from Buller’s original, descriptive text. It also includes up-to-date taxonomic information in English and te reo Māori, as well as background information about Keulemans and the production of these books.

Hand-coloured prints by watercolour artist Keulemans were first published in 1873 in the first edition of Walter Buller’s iconic book, known colloquially as ‘Buller’s Birds’. Aside from a limited edition released in 1986, this new book is the first time that the full set of these prints of native New Zealand birds has been printed in colour since the nineteenth century.

Buller completed the second edition in 1888, containing new plates, this time using chromolithography, an early form of colour printing. Author Geoff Norman came across the original watercolour proofs for this edition and the subsequent supplement by chance while in the UK.

“I was staying near Tring where the Ornithological Branch of the Natural History Museum is based, and was told about their New Zealand cabinets and also that the original watercolours for ‘Buller’s Birds’ were kept there. I realised how special those paintings were, and when I saw them knew that I wanted to republish them together with the hand-coloured first edition plates,” says Geoff.  “Keulemans’ paintings of our birdlife are bright and luminous and clear. They’re masterpieces. We’re presenting them in this new book at the same size and in the same order as they appear in the original books, but modern scanning and printing means that we are able to reproduce the colour and detail in the way they artist originally intended. I think Keulemans would like what we’ve done with his work.”

The Poster
Jock Phillips had bought a framed version of the "Native Birds of New Zealand" poster from a second hand shop. His copy of the poster had been reprinted in the 1990s by a Dunedin printer that was no longer in business.  Originally the poster was produced as a chromolithograph (a coloured print using a tablets of stone as the printing plates). The designer/artist was William Schmidt (1870-1969). He was born in Auckland and did lithographs for The New Zealand Graphic. His father was John Diedrich Schmidt, a German who was one of the founders of the Melbourne Age before he moved to New Zealand where he set up a business as a printer and engraver.

The poster was scanned but was not touched up or "Photoshopped".  Te Papa Press added a light grey border around the poster and extend the light grey text panel at the bottom to include source material and Te Papa Press details. There are 25 native bird species depicted in the poster and they are identified with tiny numbers and a key at the bottom of the poster that also gives the fraction of natural size at which the birds are reproduced.

This publication is a glorious re-discovery of an unusually decorative and well designed early NZ poster.  Te Papa Press's printers have done a wonderful job of re-printing this poster, "Native Birds of New Zealand" is printed on a superb silken paper stock that does not merely reproduce the original chromolithograph, it reincarnates it!  Copies of this poster are on sale here at NZ Fine Prints.

Historic "Epicene Women" letterpress poster opposing women's suffrage in NZ

This well known poster "Notice to Epicene Women" from Wellington identity Henry Wright is an amusing artefact from the fight for women's right to vote in New Zealand.  NZ was the first country in the world that had universal suffrage with an Electoral Act enfranchising women becoming law on 19th September 1893.

NZ Anti-suffrage poster "Notice to Epicene Women"*
(You can buy an authentic letterpress re-print here)

The National Library has dated this poster's printing to November 1902 citing an extract from the New Zealand free lance 22 November 1902, page 6: "I wonder who "Henry Wright" is? He has issued a circular to "Epicene Women", who are interested in the elections, asking them not to call on him, but to stay at home and cook their husbands' dinners, and other things. Evidently a woman hater. Oh well, it is delightful to have such frank gentlemen living in Wellington. I am interested in the elections but I shall not call for "Henry Wright's" vote. There appears to be nothing epicene about him".

However an anonymous researcher has added a note to the bottom of the re-issued letterpress poster that the notice was first used to deter campaigners door knocking for a series of massive petitions that had gathered the signatures of nearly a quarter of the adult European female population of New Zealand by 1893.  [The term "electioneering women" would not have referred to women standing for Parliament and door knocking for votes as women were barred from standing for Parliament in NZ until 1919.]

Both the earlier and later usage dates could be correct if Mr Wright (and others - there is no record of how the size of the original print run) continued to provoke people with his poster for some years after the passing of the Electoral Act into law.  But the actual date of first printing is almost certainly around 1893 rather than the National Library's date of 1902, it seems unlikely that even the most hidebound reactionary would still be bearing a grudge of such lasting intensity about women being allowed to vote a decade after the Electoral Act was passed  that they would commission such a poster for its first use as late as the 1902 election.

Henry Wright

So who was Henry Wright? Henry Wright was a Wellington debt collector and business identity, here he is in a cartoon published alongside the following verse in Truth September 26 1914.

A well-known man is Henry Wright.

Though "stoney" [broke] blokes shun him as a blight.

His spats and his hat

Just suit him quite pat

While his dress but reflects

His fondness for "checks"

And its little he recks

That many a woe-worn bankrupt might

solemnly swear he's "The Wrong Mr Wright"

The Evening Post characterised Wright at the time of his death at the age of 92 in 1936 as "one of the city's best-known figures. He has been described as the most benevolent looking professional debt-collector in the world. He was usually dressed in a belltopper, frock coat, and check trousers, with brightly-coloured tie and an opal pin."

This unique piece of NZ reactionary political propaganda has recently been re-printed using the traditional letterpress method (with moveable type laid by hand) by the letterpress enthusiasts at the Ferrymead Print Studio, the home of a superb collection of vintage printing equipment kept in working order entirely by volunteers.  For sale at just $9.95 in NZ Fine Prints' vintage poster collection.

Special thanks to the "Papers Past" digital repository of New Zealand newspaper archives for enabling this writer to research this article on the background of the man behind this old poster.

*The full text of the poster reads:

Notice to Epicene Women

Electioneering Women are requested not to call here

They are recommended to go home, to look after their children, 

cook their husband's dinners, empty the slops, and generally attend

 to the domestic affairs for which Nature designed them.

By taking this advice they will gain the respect of all right-

minded people - an end not to be attained by unsexing themselves

and meddling in the masculine concerns of which they are profoundly ignorant.

Henry Wright 103 Mein Street, Wellington.

Vintage Posters & Prints (NZ Fine Prints Look Book 5/13)

Vintage Poster & Prints Lookbook | May 2013 ©NZ Fine Prints Ltd 

First prints of Pat Hanly paintings for 20 years!

Print of Pat Hanly's 1988 Painting "Doing It"
480 x 480mm image size $NZ69.95

Just published and available to buy today from NZ Fine Prints are the first fine art reproduction prints of paintings by NZ artist Pat Hanly to be available since the late 1980s!  In the words of the publisher "Over a career spanning four decades, Pat Hanly proposed a new manner of looking at New Zealand - the land and its people. His art heralded new ways of thinking about this country - as a nation that belonged to the young and the adventurous, to the dreamers and to those who could see the vital place the island nation could have within Polynesia and the broader Pacific."

The two paintings that have been chosen for reproduction feature on the covers of the standard and limited edition versions of "Pat Hanly", a book recently published by Ron Sang Publications. The chosen paintings are Hanly's 1988 work "Doing It" (illustrated at left) and a 1973 still life painting "Telephone Table".

The large-scale reproductions showcase two paintings from an output which "must stand as the most vivid, animated body of paintings by a single artist to have yet hailed from New Zealand."

NZ Street Art Series by Milton Springsteen

"Not So Square" by NZ street artist Milton Springsteen

NZ street artist Milton Springsteen's reworks of famous NZ paintings demonstrates more than a casual appreciation of NZ art history - as you can see shown in the pictures that illustrate this article.  Springsteen's "Corrupt Classics" is the first series of street art style prints that reference the artistic traditions of NZ on the New Zealand market. The selection of artworks to parody from painters such as Dick Frizzell, Bill Hammond and Robin White has got us wondering about the background of the artist known as Milton Springsteen.  From the beginning we were pretty certain Springsteen wasn't George Shaw (organiser of Nelson's Oi You street art festival where Springsteen's artwork first appeared) because the artists' knowledge (that veers toward reverence) of the classics of NZ painting doesn't fit with someone who has only been in NZ since 2009.  We don't think these artworks are the prints of a teenage graffiti artist either, this is someone who has studied their NZ painters carefully enough to imitate their style, a practising artist who has received their art education through the NZ school system and we'd wager at art school as well.

Street Art style Bill Hammond

Surrounded every day with the iconic works of famous NZ painters (these, after all, are exactly the kind of paintings of which reproduction fine art prints are made) the Corrupt Classics were received with delight as well as some degree of trepidation here at NZ Fine Prints.  We couldn't wait to surprise visitors to our gallery with the collision of the street art ethos and fine art, however this was mixed with anxiety at the idea of offending some of our favourite artists. Dick Frizzell?  Not worried about his reaction to "Not so Square" as he's NZ's pioneer of the notion popularized most recently by commentator Kirby Ferguson as "everything is a re-mix" and has even recently collaborated with his street artist son Otis with graffiti style paintings in the "Blockbusters" show, but Dame Robin White (who had recently given us permission to re-publish this fascinating interview about her early forays into printmaking), what was she going to think about her Maketu Fish & Chip shop apparently vandalised in "Fries with That"?

However after contemplating this series of street art style re-mixes released by the artist known as Milton Springsteen in our gallery for several weeks now our conclusion is not that s/he is sneering at these classic NZ paintings, Springsteen is, well, simply remixing them, to "cast sharp light on the anomolies of the modern world."  To us it's humorous (we smirk especially at the Hammondesque "Know How, Can Do") and the prints humour echoes the surprising lightness in the social commentrary of fellow street artist Banksy, whose revolutionary use of wit was as clear a break from the previously rather heavy (agressive/macho) grafitti scene in Bristol as was his use of stencils.

NZ Street Art collides with NZ Fine Art in "Fries with That"

Street artists have a tradition of anonymity due to the illegal nature of urban art, it's self-defeating to sign with a tag that is your own name if you are breaking the law. Unmasking the artists behind street art nom de plumes is not in the spirit of the game. Now we stock prints of his work we are often asked Who is Banksy? and although this writer knows the answer telling people is like revealing the murderer before someone goes to see a whodunit, the tiny thrill of sharing something you know and they don't is not worth spoiling the show. So, yes, we think we know exactly who NZ street artist Milton Springsteen is but we are not telling!

Tony Ogle talks about his new print "Matapouri Window"

Tony Ogle

Tony Ogle doesn't produce a lot of prints.  Sure, viewed as a single collection created over several decades he has amassed an impressive body of artwork but it has actually been a six month wait for a new print since his last edition (Time Out Tongaporutu) arrived in stock right at the end of 2011. In Tony's latest print "Matapouri Window" shown here the artist returns to his geographical roots. Many years ago Ogle, together with fellow printmaker Tom Burnett, established a screenprinting workshop at Matapouri Bay, a charming sandy beach 40 minutes from Whangarei and 5 minutes from the fishing mecca of Tutukaka.

Compositionally the print uses the device of a window to create a view within a view. Tony says it's an idea with a venerable tradition in art history, "It works well to create depth and gives the impression of a picture within a picture. (a frame within a frame)" and he says "people love 'views'". Matapouri Window is a deliciously colourful print, an exhuberant celebration of screenprinting technique that lines up multiple colours perfectly. There are actually a total of 17 separate solid colours and 2 grey glazes used to make this print. It transports the viewer to Northland, to a time of year and day and to a state of mind. As we say in our catalogue listing, it is "the quintessential Tony Ogle print".

"Matapouri Window" new 19 colour handmade print by Tony Ogle

Tony Ogle has been working as a printmaker for a long time but when we asked him how long it took to print with the complexity of "Matapouri Window" he told us that he spent "6 days working on separations off the original. 1 day preparing the screens, 2 and a half days mixing colours. I averaged 3 colours printed on the 200 sheets so approx. 7 days of printing." As a comparison Dame Robin White when she was asked about her early printmaking experiences in our May interview, she said "I started in the beginning of March and worked on [the print] full-time and finished it about the first week of April, so it took me well over a month - working every day, eight hours a day or sometimes more". Printmaking by hand is definitely hard work being technically demanding and time-consuming.

"What about the complexity of the image?" NZ Art Print News asked Tony "Did you have a higher number of A/Ps (Artist Proofs) than normal to get the registration right on all those stripes?". Ogle told us he had "Only 3 complete rejects plus a small number that can be successfully hand retouched. Successful registration relies on a number of factors - accurate separations firstly, lining up registration marks on screens and care placing paper into registration tabs on the table."

And lastly we asked Tony about overglaze that he has used for the first time to accent the shadows and add further depth to the print. He told us that "Glaze consists mainly of clear acrylic solution - so it is very watery compared to creamy paint. A small amount of black was mixed in to give the shadow effect whilst allowing the colours to still show through." We had heard that the glaze had been a bit tricky to apply. Tony said ruefully that "Any hair or chip of paint lying on the surface of the print will be highlighted  by a glaze not overprinted like other colours so keeping things clean is important. Also you need to give the prints time to dry properly otherwise the glaze will stick to the paper when stacked up."

This new print is already selling steadily despite being listed for sale for just a few days so far. If you collect the work of Tony Ogle "Matapouri Window" is highly recommended as it is large, technically complex and extremely attractive - you can buy this print online here or call NZ Fine Prints on 0800 800 278.

Lost McCahon painting sells for a pittance on eBay then returns to NZ in mysterious circumstances

Rumours circulating on Facebook about a sensational auction on eBay for a lost Colin McCahon painting which sold for a mere fraction of its worth back in 2006 have been confirmed by people close to the story today - but the mystery of how the painting returned to NZ remains.

Bidding at $US199.99, 4 hours til closing...

Shown here is a screenshot from the auction on eBay "Colin McCahon Bellini II Enamel Paint on Hardboard No Reserve" with bidding at a mere $US199.99 just four hours before it closed with a winning bid of just $US 4500 - approx $NZ6500 today.  This is the deal of the decade for a NZ painting considering Colin McCahon currently holds the record sale price for a painting by a NZ artist with a top price paid of just over $1.1 million (for Let Be, Let Be in 2009).  However the excitement didn't stop when the auction closed as the vendor refused to hand over the painting to the auction winner - Auckland tribal artifact collector Andrew Pendergrast.  Pendergrast claims "someone must have offered [the broker listing the painting on behalf of the vendor] some cash to disclose the vendor's name" because despite the vendor's agent being forced to refund $1000 in currency conversion fees and Pendergrast significantly increasing his offer "no matter what I offered the vendor had uplifted the painting from the broker and there was nothing I could do to change his mind". 

Mike Weston, of Auckland pop art studio Weston Frizzell, who today admitted via email to being the unsuccessful underbidder on the auction would not say how he first heard of the auction but said he "watched for a few days and it seemed to have gone un-noticed - I couldn't sleep". Weston inadvertently got locked out of the auction at the last minute due to bidding an auto bid amount over the unregistered buyer limit - "If I'd bid only $10k [instead of $50k] I would have got it" says Weston ruefully. 

Vendor photograph of painting

The painting, shown here at right, is one of Colin McCahon's Bellini series, and almost certainly from the group of 19 paintings purchased by the American collector Edward Danziger from Auckland's Ikon Gallery in the early 1960s. According to McCahon expert Martin Browne who tracked down Edward Danzinger in the 1990s there was "definitely at least one missing Bellini Madonna painting" even after Brown's time-consuming detective work managed to reveal the whereabouts of two more Bellini Madonna paintings along with at least another half a dozen McCahon artworks that had previously been part of Danzinger's collection.  Although Browne would have to sight the painting in the flesh to confirm his view on its authenticity he says that there was a painting referred to as "The Second Bellini Madonna, 1961" shown in Contemporary New Zealand Painting at the Auckland Art Gallery in November December 1961 and "there seems a good chance that the eBay one may be it". According to Browne in all probability "someone got themselves a bargain".

Prominent New Zealand dealers and galleries approached for comment would not say if the painting had been purchased by them, one Auckland dealer summed up their collective response - if it were them "that would be confidential information" which they would not divulge.

Please leave a comment below or call the writer at New Zealand Prints if you can help solve the mystery of who was the successful purchaser and how they managed to get this long lost Colin McCahon painting back to NZ.

First New Zealand Print?

Recently we came across an Art New Zealand article by R.P. Hargreaves that challenged the place of surveyor Robert Park's "Village of Richmond" as being the first print to be lithographed in New Zealand.  The assertion that "Village of Richmond" was the first NZ print was originally promulgated in the groundbreaking 1978 work "Early Prints of New Zealand" by E.M. and D.G. Ellis. In the article Hargreaves mounts a convincing case for William Mein Smith's "Lambton Harbour & Mount Victoria from the Tinakore" being the first NZ print instead.

We spoke to the authors of "Early Prints of New Zealand" about this discovery.  They said that they were excited to learn about Hagreave's research as the N.Z. Gazette and Wellington Spectator (used as a source by Hargreaves) was not available to them when they were researching the book in the mid-1970s.  They were reluctant to say however that this would be the last word on the issue of the first New Zealand lithograph printed in New Zealand because earlier lithographs could still possibly come to light - or prints could have been made in NZ pre-dating Mein Smith's Wellington view and simply lost to posterity some time over the last 170 years.

Shown here is the print "Lambton Harbour and Mount Victoria from the Tinakore [sic]" - this image is from the Hocken Library collection where the only known copy of this print resides.

Vintage New Zealand Posters from NZ Prints feature in new Flybuys TV Ads

Some of New Zealand Fine Prints' NZ vintage posters feature in the new Flybuys loyalty program television commercials.  All spots in the series start the same way - with an Oliver Twist character asking for more in an historically decorated New Zealand classroom dating from the early or perhaps mid-20th century.  On the walls are our prints of vintage travel and tourism posters featuring New Zealand destinations including Mount Egmont and Mount Cook.  [Screenshot shown here - we've favourited the full ad at NZ Prints Youtube channel if you want to check it out in its entirety].

NZ Prints regularly supply prints for NZ television production companies producing drama, comedy and current affairs as well as commercials (prints from our gallery have appeared most recently in episodes of Mercy Peak - a fine selection of pre-Raphaelite art, Outrageous Fortune and our print of Dick Frizzell's Mickey to Tiki was used to illustrate an item on copyright on Fair Go). Art is an important part of set design - the process that places actors in an historical time or contemporary setting with an appropriate backdrop.  We were particularly delighted to supply a house-worth of prints from an appropriate historical period for "The Lovely Bones" filmed in Wellington by Peter Jackson.  Because we have supplied prints to film and television for decades (we even had prints behind the reception desk back in the very early days of Shortland St) if you are a producer or set designer looking for images to use we are well versed in the copyright procedure to be followed for their use.  

Jason Kelly's Kiwiana art print series

We have just catalogued for sale the entire first series of art prints from contemporary kiwiana artist Jason Kelly. Trained as a sign-writer Kelly combines kiwiana icons such as jandals, Tip Top icecream and chocolate fish with humourous slogans showcasing the quirks of New Zealand culture. Kelly references the shared culture that kiwis recognise as being part of their collective identity and we are fairly certain this series will be popular as kiwiana gifts delivered to homesick NZers living overseas this Xmas.

Combining images with a message means, Kelly says, that commercial art often has to be more ingenious than fine art because the artist has to find a way of making the two parts of the artwork work together effectively and harmoniously.  The original paintings are on recycled wood done by hand using only paint brushes and mahl stick without the use of any stencils. The high quality prints using extremely lightfast inks capture this handmade retro feel with the details of the original picture's surface captured in superb detail.

Shown here is one of our favourite prints from Kelly's new series of kiwiana images - Sunday Drive.  This is Kelly's celebration of the great kiwi pastime of spending Sunday driving the family on a sightseeing journey by car with no particular destination in mind (perhaps visiting the rellies [relatives] along the way).  His complete range of new art prints is in the Jason Kelly collection and all of his contemporary kiwiana style artwork features in NZ Prints' ever expanding gallery of kiwiana art.