About
Old masterpieces, a second impression.
"Tiraj" is the Turkish word for a print run: the number of impressions pulled from one plate.
TirajArt takes paintings, drawings, prints and early photographs that museums have released into the public domain (The Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art) and re-imagines each one through a historical printmaking process. A Rembrandt portrait comes back as a sanguine engraving, a Redouté rose as a cyanotype on washi, a Hiroshige station as a three-colour risograph.
Each print is made with Tiraj, our own print-simulation software, which builds the image the way the real process would: carved lines for linocut, a rocked ground for mezzotint, ink layers in registration for riso. Every colour, paper and setting is chosen and checked by hand, one artwork at a time. Nothing here is AI-generated.
Every listing names the museum, the artist and the date of the original, so you always know what hangs on your wall.
The Tiraj method
Tiraj is printmaking software we wrote ourselves. It does not paint over a photo with a filter, and it does not invent anything: it takes the museum image and rebuilds it with the marks of a real process.
- Engraving: parallel burin lines that swell and taper with the tone.
- Mezzotint: a rocked, velvety dark ground, scraped back to the light.
- Risograph and screen print: two or three flat inks laid in registration, with grain and a slight misregistration where they overprint.
- Cyanotype: Prussian blue on washi, with brushed edges, after Anna Atkins.
- Linocut and aquatint: carved blocks over a coloured ground; tone built from etched grain.
Every print in the shop (18 so far, in aquatint, cyanotype, engraving, linocut, mezzotint, risograph, screen print) is set up by hand: technique, inks, paper and crop are chosen one artwork at a time and checked at full size before it is released.
