An example of a kata-gami stencil
design. The actual
size is about 14 inches high and twenty inches long
in a book of reproductions I have in my library.
Below I tried to present a
detail (near the middle, lower
side) so you could make out the grid of silk threads
that hold the paper stencil details together.
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Seri is Latin for silk.
I'm told that a society of artists who wanted to raise the value of
silkscreen prints gave it the new name, serigraph, to distinguish
it from commercial silk screen printing.
Silk screen, or, in the modern use,
"screen printing", originated in Asia. I'm familiar only
with one of its ancestors, the stencil printing technique used in Japan
called kata-gami. The stencils were made of paper, and when
detailed "islands" were included in the design they used a
network of silk
threads to hold them in place.
The more detailed they were, the
more threads were needed, until a silk fabric came into use. Pochoir,
a French word describing the use of stencils, was the ancestor from the
West..
Today, screens are usually made of a
synthetic monofilament such as polyester or nylon, and there are fine
metal wire screens. Even so, people usually call the printing
process, "silk screen".
You're really on your toes to have
answered this correctly.
- GM
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