A versatile printing technique that creates sharp and detailed prints. The screen, or frame, holds taut woven mesh onto which a design is drawn in an ink-blocking substance, thereby creating a stencil. This is inked, and in the process the design transferred onto fabric or paper. The original Chinese technique employed silk mesh and was called silk screen printing. Andy Warhol popularised it as an art form, and as such it is called serigraphy. A low cost, versatile and highly efficient method, it was seriously developed as a textile printing method in America in the 1960s.
Each colour needs its own screen, so all but the simplest printed pattern is built up with multiple screens.