On the ledger

A single typed sheet, forty lines long, is the most honest document this project owns. It is headed "tropical-garden-B" and lists, for each of forty pictures, how many prints were sold in four editions: colour large, colour small, black-and-white large, black-and-white small.

Most lines read 0/50, 0/80. A few read 1/50, or 3/50, 4/80. And eight lines read 61/100 and 101/150 — the pictures the artist chose to issue in larger editions, and which found their way into more homes than the rest.

The new editions on this site continue that sheet rather than replace it. Where the ledger says 3/50, the next print sold here is numbered 4. New sizes that never existed in the original editions are issued fresh, in editions of fifty, and say so. Nothing is restarted, nothing is inflated. The certificate that travels with each print records which is which.