"Giclée" is widely used as a fine-art name for an inkjet print. Conservation practice prefers the process name, plus the ink and the paper, because those are what actually age. The word on the label is the process. This is a materials-and-label guide, not a shop teaser, and not a takedown of a trade word for its own sake.
Image Permanence Institute, IPI's Guide to: Preservation of Digitally-Printed Images (©2018 Image Permanence Institute, at Rochester Institute of Technology): "The term inkjet comes from the fact that ink is jetted from a nozzle to the paper." Under "Gallery Labels": "The media descriptor used on gallery labels should be the name of the process: inkjet, dye sublimation, or electrophotography. Non-standard names such as giclée, archival pigment, laser, etc. should not be used."
The same guide's recommended inkjet media name is colorant, process, image-receiver layer, and support — for example, "pigment inkjet on porous-coated baryta paper." Brand names of printers, inks, or papers "should not be used as, or in, media names, descriptors, or on gallery labels." In the glossary: "Giclée — A term often used for marketing fine-art or fine-art reproduction inkjet prints."
Care, briefly: IPI recommends cold storage for inkjet prints. The guide's "COLD" anchor is 40°F / 4°C, 30–55% RH. The guide also treats pigment inkjet surfaces as abrasion-sensitive and advises against direct rolling or stacking; polyester interleaving if contact is unavoidable. This is not a full storage manual.
What IPI actually says
Say inkjet, or dye sublimation, or electrophotography. "Giclée" is a marketing term for fine-art inkjet, in IPI's glossary. "Archival pigment" is in the same "should not be used" list as "giclée" and "laser." The useful label names the colorant, the process, the receiver layer, and the support, and it does not use a printer, ink, or paper brand as the media name.
IPI's Digital Print Preservation Portal, the public site for research begun in 2007, notes that "Inkjet, electrophotographic (laser), and dye sublimation materials account for the overwhelming majority of desktop documents and an increasing portion of short-run publications and monographs." That is a statement about how common the processes are, not a fade rating, and this page does not invent permanence years or "archival" guarantees.
The collecting rhyme
Museums had to learn to name a plotter drawing as a plotter drawing. The V&A's history of collecting digital objects records that early computer art often entered the collection as prints, and that plotter drawings were sometimes represented by silkscreens because of "technical limitations in reproducing plotter drawings" and because "artworks created by computers were approached, at this time, with scepticism by curators." The later shift to naming works as plotter drawings is the same honesty IPI asks of a label: say how the mark was made. What plotter art is and how it's made is the companion for that process.
An edition inscription is only as good as the process record behind it: ink, support, and a closed matrix. Print and edition records is the sibling for how editions are inscribed. Tate's art term "Edition" notes that modern artists' prints are "usually limited to a specified number, anything between 2 and 1000 or more," signed and numbered, often with artist's proofs and related impressions, and that when the limit is a decision "the printing surface is usually destroyed." That range is Tate's, not a house edition size, and it is not repeated here as a rule.
This page does not recommend a house paper, ink, or printer.
A situation like this
This is a worked example, not a lot and not a customer. A label reads "archival giclée, limited edition," with no colorant, no support, and no process beyond the trade word. A later conservator is asked how the sheet will age. The useful name is already in IPI's example: colorant, process, receiver, support.
Sources
- Image Permanence Institute, IPI's Guide to: Preservation of Digitally-Printed Images, ©2018 Image Permanence Institute, at Rochester Institute of Technology. https://www.rit.edu/ipi/dp3/sites/rit.edu.ipi.dp3/files/documents/dp3_guide.pdf
- Image Permanence Institute, Digital Print Preservation Portal (DP3). https://www.rit.edu/ipi/dp3
- Victoria and Albert Museum, "A history of collecting digital objects at the V&A," last updated 17 April 2024. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/a-history-of-collecting-digital-objects-at-the-va
- Tate, Art Term "Edition." https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/e/edition
Also in this section
- Print and edition records — the inscription, and what has to stand behind it.
- What plotter art is and how it's made — name the machine that drew the line.
- What is glitch art — name the format that produced the break.
- How to store and handle inkjet prints — IPI’s care table for inkjet. Cold storage is the recommendation; COLD and FROZEN are separate.
Applications to show unfinished work are open at Apply. First lots have not opened. The shop is not the subject of this page.
The useful next step is to write the process, the ink, and the paper on the label, or to read the mediums index. If something on this page is wrong, write to us.
Author: Escherbridge. Last reviewed: 2026-11-10, America/Denver.