Ray Harm

Harm explained his two signatures himself. He lettered his name on each painting, so that printed name appears on every copy. A second name, in pencil and in script, below or near the printed one, means he signed that copy by hand.⁵

Not every print was signed or numbered. He wrote that for the first two or three years, from 1962, individual prints were neither signed nor numbered, and that later prints were signed and individually numbered. Some editions made to raise funds were partly numbered and signed, with the rest signed only.⁵

Editions were large. His official site gives 5,000 for Red-winged Blackbird (1967) and Rufous-sided Towhee (1969), and 7,500 for Yellow-breasted Chat (1973). Louisville Magazine quotes a bookseller’s view that Harm overprinted and so lowered the value of his art.^16,14,17,3

Some early prints carry a plate number, not a print number. He first meant the pictures for a book of American wildlife in which each species had a plate number. The book was abandoned, and numbering each print against the size of the edition came later.⁵

The official site marks each edition “S” or “S/N (Signed & Numbered)”. The editions of 1967 to 1978 on the pages we read are marked “S”, which the site does not define there; two from 1989 and 1990 are marked “S/N”.^16,22,23,24

Auction catalogs describe the prints as offset lithographs published by Frame House Gallery. One copy of Baltimore Oriole is recorded as signed at lower right and numbered 846/1000, with a Frame House Gallery blind stamp at lower left.^13,25

A later example is a 1984 Winter Feeder, recorded as signed in the plate and in pencil at lower right, with “edition 1829 of 2000” in pencil at lower left.²⁶

Prints came with printed matter. Auction records mention a Frame House Gallery information packet with a statement by the artist, a paper sleeve of information on the back of a frame, and an artist’s note on the back of another.^13,26,27

Prints of the 1960s are vulnerable to light. The official site says editions released from the early to the late 1960s were printed before the industry had inks with color-fast protection.²⁸

Of artist’s proofs he wrote that they were finished samples from the press run which the artist might give away, sell or donate, and that in his case they were sold directly by the artist.⁵

Louisville Magazine gives one original price: a cedar waxwing print of 1968, one of an edition of 5,000, first sold for $20.³

His pictures also appear on Spode bone-china collector plates of the 1970s, the American Songbird Series. An auction record says they are marked “Limited Edition Spode Bone China England” underneath. These are not prints.²⁹

According to Wikipedia, his son, Ray Harm Jr., sells prints made from paintings that were not part of the main collection.⁷

[original issue prices of the prints on this site not confirmed]

[meaning of the “S” edition code not confirmed]