Iris Fine Art Reproductions
Iris printers have also been used since the late 1980s as final output digital printing devices in the production of fine art reproductions on various media, including paper, canvas, silk, linen and other textiles. There were many printers, photographers, artists, and engineer who saw the merit in using this industrial proof printer as a way to produce high-resolution color accurate reproductions. Color engineer David Coons used the 3024 at the Walt Disney Company to print images from Disney’s new computer 3D animation system. He also wrote software to print works created on desktop computers such as Sally Larsen 1989 Transformer series, and a 1990 photo exhibition for Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Nash was so impressed with the quality of the Iris prints, he purchased his own Iris Graphics 3047 ink-jet printer for $126,000 to print further editions of his work and eventually set up Nash Editions, a digital reproduction company based on the Iris printer. There were many problems with adapting the Iris printer to fine art printing including modifying the machines to take heavy paper stock and dealing with the poorly fade-resistant (fugitive) nature of the inks.
Because of the Iris printer’s connection to digital, ink-jet industrial and home/office printing, one of the print makers at Nash Editions, Jack Duganne, thought such terms might have bad connotations in the art world. He came up with a neologism for the process, the coined name "giclée". Similarly, Nash and Mac Holbert, manager of Nash Editions, came up with the name "digigraph" for this type of print.
In the 2010s the Iris printer was for the most part superseded in the fine art printing business by Epson and other large-format printers that are much cheaper than the Iris and use inks designed to be archival.
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