Stik valuation

Screenprints are the bulk of it by a wide margin, and they are what nearly everybody who writes to us owns. Unique works on canvas and board exist in far smaller numbers. Then there are the books, the posters and the printed ephemera, which are not editions and are confused with them constantly — a poster from an exhibition and a numbered screenprint of the same image are different objects and it is worth establishing which one you have before anything else.

This is the part that makes Stik different from almost anyone else in the field. A great many editions went out through charity partnerships, hospital and housing projects, and distributions to people living locally — frequently by ballot, frequently at little or no cost. That is to the artist’s credit and it creates a practical difficulty at the same time: the provenance of a large number of Stik prints is a personal account rather than a receipt.

It does not sink a sale. It does change what is needed to support one, and it is worth thinking hard about what you still have — a ballot confirmation, an email from the organising charity, a letter, a dated photograph of the collection day. Evidence of that kind is more useful here than it would be for an artist whose work only ever moved through galleries.

The same image commonly exists in several colourways, and in signed and unsigned versions. Those are different editions with different values, and they are very hard to tell apart from a photograph of the image alone. Where the edition carried a pencil signature and numbering, both should be present and legible.

Photograph the whole sheet including the margins, in daylight, square on. That single photograph answers most of the questions we would otherwise have to ask.

There is no third-party authority for Stik — nothing equivalent to Pest Control, and nobody who will examine a work after the fact and issue a ruling on it. What stands in its place is the paperwork from the original release, and the fact that the image is six lines and two dots makes that paperwork carry more weight here than it would for an artist whose hand is harder to copy.

Flat black on white paper shows everything. Handling creases, fingerprints in the margins, a soft corner, the faint tide line from an old mount — all of it reads immediately, and none of it can be undone cheaply. Fading is the fault owners almost never spot, because it happens slowly on their own wall over a decade and the sheet they remember hanging is the sheet they still think they are looking at.

The full sheet photographed square on in daylight, margins included; the reverse; a close photograph of the signature and numbering; the measurements of the sheet rather than the frame; and whatever record you have of how it came to you, however informal. If it arrived through a charity release or a community distribution, say so — that is useful information, not a problem to be glossed over.