Made

We print on three surfaces. Here is what each one does to a work, and what it ruins.

Most galleries hang the work and say nothing about what it is sitting on. That is fair for a unique object, where the artist chose the support. It is a poor convention for a printed work, where the support is chosen afterwards by whoever is selling it. A surface that maximises black depth usually mirrors the room back at you; a texture that flatters a painted gesture will destroy a hairline. There is no neutral option and no best one, only a match or a mismatch between one image and one set of physics.

MetalDye-sublimation on 3mm aluminium. Gloss, over an opaque white base

Paper250gsm uncoated, off-white, no optical brighteners. Loose, or framed on a lighter sheet

CanvasCotton-blend weave on a 3cm stretcher. How we make a panorama

PrintedOn a bench in the buyer's own country wherever one holds the stock

Held oneNo. Not one physical sample of anything on this page

Swipe the drawing

Drawn, not photographed. The three marks are identical in the file; what differs is what each surface does to them. We have never held a physical sample of any of these, and a rendered substrate texture on a page about material honesty would be the exact thing this page argues against.

Metal

We print the image in reverse onto a transfer sheet in sublimation dyes, then bring it against a polymer-coated aluminium panel at around 204°C for 75 to 95 seconds. The solid dye turns straight to gas without passing through a liquid, migrates into the polymer, and sets again as the panel cools, now trapped inside the coating rather than sitting on top of it. Everything else follows from that: no ink is exposed to the air, no fibre or weave scatters the light, and no glass is needed because the skin already is the protection. We print it over an opaque white base, which is what lets a highlight read as true white.

Process Dye-sublimation Panel 3mm aluminium Finish Gloss Glazing None Hanging Floats, rear-mounted Ratios All, including 1:3 panoramic

Why we chose it

The only sealed surface we printWipeable. A kitchen, a bathroom or a hallway is not a problem.

True black beside true whiteThe white base buys a range no bare substrate can reach.

What it flatters

Contrast and colour separationStorm light, water, night architecture, chrome.

Detail that has to stay fineNo fibre, no weave. A hairline arrives as a hairline.

What it ruins

A pastel or muted paletteReads cooler and flatter than intended. There is no desaturated register here.

A wall opposite a windowGloss means real specular reflection. Off axis it mostly goes. Square on it stays.

Paper

A 250gsm uncoated sheet, off-white, made without optical brightening agents. Brighteners are fluorescent dyes added to most bright-white paper: they absorb ultraviolet and re-emit it as visible blue, so a sheet looks whiter and cooler than its own fibre is. Being dyes, they break down faster under UV than the paper carrying them and take the sheet's colour balance with them when they go. We print on a sheet that leaves them out, and the cost of that is immediate: a natural, slightly yellow cast, most visible in pale pastels and neutral greys.

One thing we will not do quietly. A framed print is not this sheet. Every framed product on the market, ours included, is fixed to a lighter 200gsm coated stock, because no manufacturer will put its own heavy uncoated paper behind glazing. So the archival sheet ships loose, and nothing framed is called archival here.

Sheet 250gsm uncoated off-white Brighteners None Surface Matte Framed 200gsm coated silk, plexiglass, no mat Ratios All except panoramic

Why we chose it

It answers the one question that ages a sheetWe took the brightener-free stock and gave up the cool white most buyers expect.

It reads as ink on paperNot a photograph behind glass. For drawing and monochrome that is the point.

What it flatters

Warm, film-toned and sepia workThe sheet's cast sits with the palette instead of fighting it.

Drawing, monochrome, print-makingAnything whose subject is the mark rather than the light.

What it ruins

Cool neutrals and blue-greysMinimal work on a clean white ground fights the warm cast, and loses.

A picture that needs a deep blackAn uncoated sheet cannot reach the black point a sealed surface can.

Canvas

Canvas is not a cheap surface and calling it one would be its own kind of dishonesty. It is a conditional one, and the condition fits in a sentence: a woven support is close to harmless to a gradient and permanently destructive to a hard edge.

Two mechanisms do that. The first is optical and distance forgives it: the weave lays a texture across the image, but a 20/20 eye resolves about seven line-pairs per millimetre at reading distance and only one or two at the metre a work is viewed from. Hence the universal description, superb across the room and textured up close. The second is not optical and no larger file fixes it. Canvas fibres wick ink sideways along the weave as they absorb it, so a hairline or a letterform stroke comes back fuzzed. One case looks like continuous tone and behaves like line work: a dense or faint star field, where the stars are point sources at the highest spatial frequency in the frame.

Support Cotton-blend weave Stretcher 3cm, gallery wrap Glazing None Ratios 1:2 and 3:10 only Wrap loss 19 to 40mm a side

Why we chose it, and only here

It is how we make a panorama1:2 and 3:10 have no stocked alternative on any bench we print at. Without canvas an artist would be told to crop.

The panorama is where the weave costs leastA long horizontal is nearly always landscape, sky, water or coast. The weave leaves those intact.

Why not on anything elseA gallery wrap folds 19 to 40mm of real image around the bar on every side, and we do not cut into a master to fit a format.

What it flatters

Painterly and continuous-tone workThe weave and the brushmark argue in the same language.

Cloud structure in gas and dustBright, sparse-star nebula compositions survive it intact.

What it ruins

Line work and typographyPermanently. If a letterform or a rule carries the image, nothing woven.

Dense or faint star fieldsThey look like photography and behave like line work. Point sources smear.

What we will not claim

A gallery that tells you what it does not know is worth more than one that does not. These are set at full size because they are not small print.

"Museum quality" There is no such standard. Nothing awards the phrase and nothing can withdraw it, which is exactly why it is on every competitor's page. A stock, a weight and a mechanism are checkable. That is the trade we make.

"Archival", past the sheet The word describes one 250gsm uncoated brightener-free stock. A finished print is a system: paper, ink, press, mounting, glazing and the room it hangs in. No independent laboratory has tested our presses. Nothing framed is called archival here.

A permanence figure One exists for metal and we will not print it: a manufacturer's own commissioned study, never independently replicated. Both "metal lasts decades" and "metal fades fast" go past that evidence.

That we have held one We have not inspected a physical sample of anything on this page. Not one. It comes from manufacturer specification, catalogue data, published conservation literature and consistent trade practice, and where those disagreed we took the more conservative reading.