Coldset web is not the medium you automatically associate with production of an art exhibition catalogue, but a New Zealand printer has proved the two are by no means incompatible.

With ‘Rare and Unrivalled Beauty’, newspaper printer Horton Media collected both the newspapers and coldest process awards at this year’s Pride In Print awards evening in Christchurch.

Judges praised the blemish-free art exhibition booklet, “particularly given the particularly time-sensitive challenges inherent in the coldset process,” and spoke of the great contrast and crisp, clean depth, altogether “a superb job”.

Horton Media’s Sanjit Dutta says achieving comparability in print to the original painting was of prime concern for client, Kelliher Art Trust, which wanted a catalogue to complement an exhibition tour of prized and award-winning New Zealand artists’ work.

“Our previous other works of this nature for various other museums, communities and charitable organisations impressed them to approach us for this colour-specific reproduction of valued landscape paintings,” he said.

The catalogue to accompany the tour – also titled ‘Rare and Unrivalled Beauty’ – set out to provide an overview of the displayed paintings in their full hue and colour, and was was meant to be distributed free to art enthusiast visitors at exhibition centres in seven different locations across the country.

Dutta said the designers had made a key contribution to the dual award wins. “The project kicked off with an active initiative taken by the client’s print designers in adapting the images and files to a newspaper coldset print profile requirements.

“Full credit must be given to the team who put up the basic input foundation of this award-winning printing,” he said.

The 24-page tabloid format product was printed on 70gsm white offset, stitched and trimmed, with the 10,500-copy run meeting “rigorous” press checks during printing.

“We were elated to reproduce to the client representative’s full satisfaction – a wholehearted appreciation of the job by Kelliher Art Trust gave us complete satisfaction in meeting their expectations.”

Judges acknowledged the “huge challenge” to achieve perfect registration with no blemishes using the particular press and substrate involved in this job, and agreed that it had been delivered perfectly.

Pictured: Mike Horler of Horton Media collects the winners’ medals at the 2022 Pride In Print awards evening on June 17