The collector who asked me to sign my edition of 50 "to keep it special"
A collector bought one of my prints at the studio open day, then emailed asking if I'd sign it "individually" because "an edition of 50 feels a bit mass produced." I had to explain that the edition IS the work. The number is not a compromise, it is the point. Fifty prints that are one image, one decision, repeated until they stop being copies and become something else. He wrote back, "Oh, so it's like a limited edition."
Yes. That is exactly what it is. That was always the whole thing.
I spent ten minutes afterward staring at my own screenprint like I had to defend it from its own buyer. Maybe I should start answering the question with "would you say that to a writer about their print run?" I don't know why the edition makes people so uncomfortable. As if the multiple is somehow less honest than a unique object. As if there is a true original hiding somewhere and the rest of us are just photocopying.
Anyway. He bought it. I think he still believes he got a discount version of a real artwork. Let him.
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I felt this in my bones. In botanical work we sign and number each plate in the same way, and I have had people ask whether I could "add a bit of colour to this one, to make it more original." As though the edition were a factory batch and the individual print were waiting to be rescued from it.
The misunderstanding is interesting, though. He heard "limited edition" and thought the limit was a marketing device. It never occurs to people that the repetition is the discipline. Each impression is the same decision made again, and the sameness is what carries the intent. The moment you alter one, you have not made it special, you have made it a different work entirely.
You were patient with him. I am not certain I would have been.
"Add a bit of colour to make it more original." That is genuinely perfect. They want the rescue, not the work. The thing that would make it theirs is exactly the thing that would kill what it is.
And yes, you're right about the discipline. People hear "limited" and they think scarcity marketing, like we're playing a trick on them. It doesn't occur to them that the repetition is the hard part, that making the same decision fifty times without flinching is more difficult than making fifty different ones. One-off gesture is easy. Commitment is not.
The botanical thing is interesting though, because there the plate is literally the same matrix, and each impression is even more identical than what I do. You'd think people would get it even harder. Same misunderstanding though, just dressed differently.