About Silkscreen Printing (A short History)

Silkscreen printing (also called screenprinting or serigraphy) originated sometime around 1000 AD in East Asia as a way to create more and more complex stencils. (Stenciling had already been going on in many parts of the world for a good 2500 years at this point.) Normal stencils are limited in that all the parts must connect -- this was overcome at first by using single hairs to hold "island" shapes in place. As this idea developed, frames were made with grids of hairs upon which the stencils were laid down and attached. Eventually, someone made the leap from individual hairs to silk fabric (Englishman Samuel Simon takes credit -- he patented that method in 1907) hence the name silkscreen.

Jump forward about 100 years, and silk is only a namesake. Screenprinters all use synthetic fabric mesh these days -- it stands up much better to the rigors of the studio. Screenprinting became widely popular in the 1960's, partly thanks to Andy Warhol and his Factory. Nowadays, it has evolved into a myriad of forms and is used by everyone from punks making concert patches to poster artists to huge-scale commercial fabric printers.

Eco-Friendly Benefits of Silkscreen

In the Phaedra Paperie studio we silkscreen with water-based inks, which require no solvents. Combined with a 100% recycled paper (or 100% recycled and hydropowered paper like French's Speckletone) and you've got a print that'll make you and the earth happy.

The emulsion, once cured, becomes a non-reactive plastic film, and the emulsion remover we use to reclaim my screens is no stronger than the bleach in your laundry room.

As a human powered process, silkscreen printing itself requires no electricity. For our other electrical needs, Phaedra Paperie has chosen windpower to run our studio.