Our Story

Pearl Printing is a fine art giclée printing studio located in the Pearl District of Portland, OR.  Owned and operated by Brian Carter, who is also a graphic artist and Oregonian. There is a large technical component to digital printing and it requires a very strong grounding in both the equipment and the software required in which Brian understands. This experience has been gained through over a decade of working on computers as a designer and retoucher, an interest Brian has always had a passion for.

Pearl Printing is a culmination of many experiences in diverse creative fields, drawing together strands of both commerce and pure creativity. There is much to offer those who work with us beyond just technical competence, we have a sensibility that is; knowledgeable, attuned to the subjectivities of art, and committed to the discipline of making prints as good as they can be. We pride ourselves to produce the highest quality and most accurate reproductions possible, and will work with each artist along the way to ensure an outstanding result.

— Pearl Printing

Giclée Definition ("jhee-clay")

A giclée is a print on either paper or canvas that uses archival, pigmented inks -- not dye inks -- which can fade. The ink is sprayed from a high resolution print head attached to an inkjet printer. A giclée should last a minimum of eighty years without fading. If under glass or if sprayed with a UV coating, it should last over one hundred years.

History of the Giclée  

The word giclée was appropriated by Jack Duganne, a printmaker working at Nash Editions. He wanted a name for the new type of prints they were producing on the IRIS printer, a large format high-resolution industrial prepress proofing inkjet printer they had adapted for fine-art printing. He was specifically looking for a word that would not have the negative connotations of "inkjet" or "computer generated". It is based on the French word gicleur, which means "nozzle" (the verb form gicler means "to squirt, spurt, or spray").