Frequently Asked Questions

Piezog­ra­phy Pro is a car­bon ink-based process con­sist­ing only of black inks, cre­at­ed in 2016 by Jon Cone. black­print is using the process since the same year. The sys­tem includes a set of warm and cold tone inks, a matt HD-black, a pho­to black (glossy) and a gloss chro­ma opti­miz­er. The process allows the mix­ing of warm and cool black val­ues either through­out the print or by vary­ing them dif­fer­ent­ly on the light, medi­um or dark tones. This makes it pos­si­ble to have a total­ly per­son­alised black and white print. The new Piezog­ra­phy Pro Mat­te HD Black is the extreme­ly dark mat­te black and the Gloss Chro­ma Opti­miz­er com­plete­ly elim­i­nates gloss dif­fer­en­tial and tan­ning. Final­ly, the white val­ue of the paper is a very impor­tant ele­ment for the Piezog­ra­phy Pro as its white tone will influ­ence the final black and white tone of the print too.

Just about any­one you want. We con­tin­u­al­ly research and test papers from around the world, espe­cial­ly uncoat­ed art papers, rare papers and washi pro­duced by liv­ing nation­al trea­sures. We print on the world’s thinnest 1.6 gr/m² Japan­ese paper, black aba­ca hand­made papers, 500 gr/m² art papers with deck­led edges, as well as Hah­nemüh­le, Can­son, Moab, mat­te, glossy, sil­ver pho­to­graph­ic papers. Each of our papers is test­ed and cal­i­brat­ed to obtain the high­est black inten­si­ty and the soft­est gra­da­tions of grey. If we haven’t already test­ed or cal­i­brat­ed a paper you want, we will do it for you.

Yes, we can test it to see how it reacts and what it can offer as a black and white print. If it suits you the price of the print varies depend­ing on the dif­fi­cul­ty of print­ing your paper.

The max­i­mum width at the moment is 100 cm. The width of most of our washi or deck­led edges art paper is smaller.

You can send us a file made with your iphone and we will tell you what print­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties it will allow. We have print­ed some on 20 gr/m² Bhutanese hand­made paper with a very beau­ti­ful result. Gen­er­al­ly, we print files in 16 bits, 300 dpi and in Tiff with gam­ma pro­file 2.2.

Yes, we do, we use a Screen Cezanne Elite FT-S5500 scan­ner which scans up to 329 x 530 mm (13.0″ x 20.9″) and up to 25 mm (1″) thick. We use it for all our his­tor­i­cal plates to print them 10 times larg­er with a very high qual­i­ty of details. As for this edi­tion “bal­loon”, for exam­ple, it was made from an orig­i­nale 9 x 12cm plate of 1910. Retouch­ing is also pos­si­ble. Prices for scans and retouch­ing are shown in our price list.

We work togeth­er with two Zurich crafts­men to pro­duce cus­­tom-made frames and we can also offer you alternatives.

Our price list is avail­able online, the list of our papers and for­mats is indica­tive. Do not hes­i­tate to write to us for a spe­cif­ic size or paper that is not on our list.

Yes, we offer an alter­na­tive pric­ing for a pho­tog­ra­ph­er or artist who wants to print an edi­tion of their work and resell it for example.

All our edi­tions come from our pri­vate col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal glass plates (pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive) dat­ing from 1860 to 1910 ca.

We research, pur­chase and car­ry out all his­tor­i­cal research for each plate pub­lished by black­print edition.

The Karo Edi­tion is ded­i­cat­ed to our pri­vate col­lec­tion of glass plates. We bring to life 150-year-old pho­tographs by print­ing them on exclu­sive paper from Switzer­land and Japan. We deliv­er the pieces in a brown/black, vinyl style pack­ag­ing, with a round see-through win­dow but you can choose to buy them framed too. The pieces from the Karo Edi­tion are avail­able in lim­it­ed edi­tions. They are 30 × 30 cm and numbered.

The Pri­vate col­lec­tion rep­re­sents a unique selec­tion from our neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive glass plates col­lec­tion. We choose pieces with spe­cial sub­ject mat­ters and print them on rare art paper such as Car­ta­lafran­ca, Arch­es Velin BFK Rives, and tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese paper.

The pieces from the Pri­vate col­lec­tion are avail­able in lim­it­ed edi­tions of 5, 10, or 15 copies. Each piece is num­bered and comes with a cer­tifi­cate. You can choose to buy them framed or unframed.

Artist edi­tions are exclu­sive works of art in very lim­it­ed edi­tions realised in close col­lab­o­ra­tion with each artist cho­sen by black­print edition.

Each edi­tion is entire­ly self-pro­­duced and print­ed by black­print stu­dio. Some edi­tions often become avail­able after sev­er­al months of research and design. All exem­plar is signed and num­bered by the artist and deliv­ered with a cer­tifi­cate of authenticity.

The 1^st series “Karo” edi­tion (Nr.001 to Nr.005) are 365 copies per sub­ject. The 2^nd series (Nr.011…) is 90 copies per subject.

“Karo col­lec­tor” do not exceed 30 copies.

The “Pri­vate col­lec­tion” edi­tions are pro­duced at 15 copies.

“Artists edi­tion” between 5 and 7 copies + 2AP except for those whose price is less than CHF.500.– which are then pro­duced at 60 copies.

“³⁄₄ edi­tion” are pro­duced ar 200 copies.

All black­print edi­tions are num­bered or signed and num­bered by hand most­ly on the back (except 1 or 2 excep­tions request­ed by the artists themselves).

6 dots in relief are vis­i­ble in the right cor­ner of the work for all our black­print edi­tions on paper.

All black­print edi­tions “Karo col­lec­tors”, “Pri­vate col­lec­tion” and “Artists edi­tion” are deliv­ered with a cer­tifi­cate of authen­tic­i­ty. Excep­tions are the “Karo edi­tion” and “Take Out!” edi­tion.

“karo” edi­tion is 30 × 30 cm.
“karo col­lec­tor”, 30 × 30 and 35 × 35 cm.
The “lim­it­ed” edi­tion pro­duced on paper and washi hand­craft of very high qual­i­ty, they do not cur­rent­ly exceed the size of 56 × 76 cm.
The edi­tions made of lam­i­nat­ed glass range from 50 × 75 to 110 × 140 cm.

All black­print edi­tions are print­ed in Piezog­ra­phy Pro, the dig­i­tal black and white mono­chrome process with the high­est print­ing qual­i­ty and using only black car­bon-based inks. All our pho­tographs / draw­ings are print­ed in 2880 dpi uni­di­rec­tion­al from a 16-bit file (65,000 gray values).

We use, with rare excep­tions, archival papers (pH Neu­tral) of the high­est qual­i­ty. Main­ly Japan­ese papers (washi), Arch­es Velins and var­i­ous art papers pro­duced by crafts­men in the West and in Asia.

The black­print edi­tions with glass lam­i­na­tion are pieces made with an absolute­ly unique process.
The print­ed art­work is posi­tioned between two 2mm thick min­er­al glass­es (extra-clear or muse­um glass with­out reflec­tion). The whole is then heat­ed and weld­ed for one day in a spe­cif­ic vac­cum oven. Each glass edge of the work is then polished.

All our frames are of pro­fes­sion­al gallery/museum qual­i­ty. The major­i­ty of the frames are made to mea­sure by a Swiss crafts­man and are made of wood with muse­um glass (with­out reflection).

All edi­tions are pro­duced, designed and print­ed by black­print in Zurich. The frames are made by two Zurich crafts­men with few excep­tions. The lam­i­nat­ed glass is pro­duced in Tici­no, Switzerland.

The black­print edi­tions are avail­able on our online store and can be viewed at the black­print stu­dio in Zurich.

Some “karo edi­tions” are also avail­able at:

Ars-Ima­­go
Baden­er­strasse 211, 8003 Zürich

Fotozen­trum Museumsshop
Grüzen­strasse 45, CH-8400 Winterthur

No, you can also order as a guest.

Cre­at­ing an account allows you to keep a his­to­ry of your orders, store mul­ti­ple ship­ping and billing address­es, also to receive exclu­sive pro­mo­tions and pre­view access to the new edi­tions before that they are pub­licly vis­i­ble on black­print edition.

In both cas­es you will receive a con­fir­ma­tion of your order by email.

Yes, please con­firm your can­cel­la­tion by email at edition@blackprint.photo or even by send­ing us a Telegram or What­sApp message !

Please send us an email to edition@blackprint.photo with screen­shots of the pages that pre­vent you from plac­ing your order and your deliv­ery address. We will do our best to reg­is­ter your order online as soon as possible.

We accept cred­it card (VISA, Mas­ter­card) and Paypal.

We also accept pay­ment with Apple Pay, Google Pay and Twint.

Pay­ment with Post­fi­nance is also avail­able with the option “click&collect” if you pre­fer to pick up your edi­tion your­self at the black­print stu­dio in Zurich.

black­print now accepts pay­ment with cryp­tocur­ren­cy using Crypto.com Pay or oth­er Ethereum/ERC-20 com­pat­i­ble wal­lets (Meta­Mask, Wal­let­Con­nect Protocol).

Yes, the entire blackprint.photo web­site uses a pro­fes­sion­al SSL encryp­tion cer­tifi­cate so that all exchanges between our web­site and your brows­er are encrypt­ed, and no pay­ment meth­ods are car­ried out on our web­site or on our Swiss serv­er but processed direct­ly by secure and opti­mised pay­ment ser­vices such as Twint, Pay­Pal, Stripe and Crypto.com Pay

Yes, but if your coun­try is not avail­able at the time of your order. Please send an email to edition@blackprint.photo or a mes­sage on Telegram.

Yes, we cur­rent­ly offer free world­wide deliv­ery for all our frame­less and non-lam­i­­nat­ed glass edi­tions. For Switzer­land, deliv­ery is free even for framed editions.

In Switzer­land between 2 to 4 days. For the rest of the world between 7 to 20 days.

The ship­ping of the edi­tions is done with the Swiss postal ser­vices. (ECONOMY, PRIORITY and EXPRESS).

Yes, pick-up at the black­print stu­dio in Zurich is pos­si­ble. It is a “ship­ping” option auto­mat­i­cal­ly pro­posed dur­ing you order if your address is in Switzerland.

Yes, you will receive a track­ing num­ber by email with each order and before shipment.

Please con­tact us imme­di­ate­ly by email at edition@blackprint.photo or by Whats App or Telegram with the num­ber +41 77 491 04 50, pro­vid­ing us with pho­tos of the pack­age and the dam­aged art­work. The price of the re-ship­­ment will be refund­ed and a new edi­tion will be sent to you as soon as possible.

Our edi­tions are declared at the pur­chase price at the time of ship­ment and are sent from Switzer­land and are there­fore sub­ject to cus­toms import tax­es out­side of Switzerland.
The tax­es are dif­fer­ent for each coun­try and vary accord­ing to the val­ue of the edi­tion. black­print edi­tion unfor­tu­nate­ly can­not offer you detailed infor­ma­tion on these cus­toms taxes.

Do not hes­i­tate to write to us to ask a ques­tion by email, on insta­gram or on telegram.