Buy a limited edition print and you'll usually find a small fraction pencilled into one corner, a signature in another, and sometimes a cluster of letters that look like they belong on a car registration plate. None of it is decoration. Every mark on a print margin is doing a specific job, most of them inherited from printmaking traditions that go back further than the word "giclée" ever will.
Why pencil, not pen
Artists sign prints in pencil for a reason that has nothing to do with taste. A photocopier or scanner reproduces ink cleanly, including a signature — which makes an inked signature almost useless as proof of anything. Graphite behaves differently: it sits on the paper with a faint sheen and texture that doesn't reproduce convincingly, especially at the angle a signature is usually photographed or scanned. Pencil became the standard not because it looks more artistic, but because it's harder to fake.
The fraction: what "12/50" actually tells you
The number in the corner, written as one figure over another, states the print's position within a fixed edition size — 12/50 means the twelfth print pulled from an edition that will only ever total fifty. In older printmaking processes like etching and lithography, this number sometimes reflected genuine sequence, since a metal plate or stone can wear very slightly with each pull, meaning early numbers were, in theory, marginally crisper than late ones. For most modern print processes, including giclée, the number no longer reflects any real difference in quality between one print and the next — it exists purely to state how scarce the edition is, and to make each print individually accountable for its place within it.
A/P: the artist's own copies
Not every print in a run gets a number. Some are marked "A/P" instead — Artist's Proof — copies set aside for the artist rather than sold as part of the numbered edition. The tradition dates back to when a "proof" was a genuine test pull, checked before the full run to confirm the plate was ready. That practical function has mostly disappeared, but the custom of the artist keeping a small number for their own archive, exhibition use, or gifting has stayed. Printmaking bodies have generally recommended capping these at around ten per cent of the edition size, specifically so "artist's proof" doesn't quietly become a second, uncounted edition.
P/P and H/C: proofs for everyone else
A "P/P" is a Printer's Proof — the same idea as an Artist's Proof, but reserved for whoever physically produced the print run, historically a professional courtesy in workshops where the artist and printer were different people. "H/C" stands for hors commerce, French for "outside of commerce" — prints explicitly marked not for sale, usually kept for exhibition or documentation. Both exist for the same underlying reason as the A/P: proof that every single print made has been accounted for somewhere.
BAT: the one print that sets the standard
Before a full edition is printed, a single approved proof is pulled and marked "BAT" — bon à tirer, French for "good to pull." This is the reference copy every subsequent print in the edition is checked against for colour and quality. Traditionally there's only ever one true BAT, and it stays with the printer rather than being sold, as the master the whole edition has to match.
The blind stamp
Look closely at the margin of an older or higher-end print and you might find a small embossed mark, pressed into the paper without any ink at all — a chop mark, or blind stamp. It identifies the workshop or studio that produced the print, a tradition borrowed from Japanese woodblock printmaking, where a carved seal served the same purpose. Because it's pressed rather than printed, it can't be photocopied or scanned convincingly either, making it another small, deliberate piece of proof.
Why any of this still matters
Digital printing changed the honest answer to one question buried in all of this: does a "limited edition" actually have to be limited? With etching or lithography, a plate genuinely wore out, and workshops would sometimes deliberately deface or "cancel" it once the edition was complete, so no more prints could ever be pulled — proof to collectors that the number on their print was final. A digital file doesn't wear out. Nothing stops an edition being reprinted indefinitely except the maker's own word.
Which is really what all these marks amount to now: not physical proof that no more exist, but a maker putting their name, literally, to a promise about how many do. Our own runs are usually eighty, though not always — some pieces call for a smaller number — and every one is numbered and signed by hand for exactly that reason. It's a smaller, older habit than the word "giclée," and it hasn't stopped meaning something just because the process changed.
