The Plinth Weekly · The short answers
Questions
Checked against our own catalogue and the rules the sitting room runs on. For anything else, write to support@painted.app.
Who is Erasmus Plinth?
A tycoon of 1889 who never existed. We invented him for this house and draw him to three rules: a belly that is a perfect circle, hands like shovels twice the size of his head, and a head no bigger than a pin under a stovepipe hat, with rust mutton-chops, a brass nose and pince-nez. He resembles no real person, living or dead, and no character anyone else owns.
Is The Plinth Weekly a real magazine?
No. It is our own masthead, drawn in the manner of the chromolithograph weeklies printed in New York in the 1880s and 1890s. The heritage plates on the home page are real, from the Library of Congress, and each is credited where it hangs.
What exactly am I buying?
A giclée print in pigment ink on stretched canvas, made to order by our print lab, Prodigi. The paper proof is a giclée print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag cotton paper, sent unframed. Nothing here is hand-painted, hand-finished, signed or gilded, and we never call it that.
What sizes and prices are there?
Three canvases: Gallery, 30 × 40″, $1,800; Salon, 36 × 48″, $3,200; Grand, 45 × 60″, $5,500. The paper proof is 24 × 32″, $650. Delivery in the United States is included in every price.
What does an edition of twenty-five mean here?
Each of the ten covers is printed on canvas twenty-five times and no more, counted across all three canvas sizes. Copies are numbered in the order they are paid for, the count is read from the payments themselves, and each cover’s page strikes a number through in its grid the day it sells. At twenty-five numbers taken the cover is closed. A refunded number is struck and retired, never sold again, so a cover can close at fewer than twenty-five. The paper proof is an open edition and carries no number.
What is a sitting?
You send one photograph of yourself and write a caption, and the magnate on a cover of The Plinth Weekly comes back with your face. Two manners: Cover, 1889, the chromolithograph caricature, where you keep your face and wear Plinth’s circle belly and shovel hands, or Society Oil, 1895, a full-length portrait in the manner of the society painters. A sitting costs the edition price at the same size plus $600, and it is numbered C-1, C-2 and on, outside the twenty-five.
Who may sit?
Adults only, one person per photograph. You tick two boxes before the upload opens: the photograph is of you, or you hold the sitter’s written permission, and the sitter is 18 or older. We refuse a public figure, a child, a second person in the frame, and a uniform or insignia of a real organisation.
Can I write anything as the caption?
Up to sixty characters of letters, numbers and ordinary punctuation, set in type under the picture exactly as you wrote it. Tease the sitter as much as you like, and name nobody else: the checker refuses a list of real billionaires’ surnames on sight, and a safety model reads every caption before the type is set.
What happens to my photograph?
It is held in memory for the length of the sitting, sent to OpenAI to be checked and painted, and never written to our storage. OpenAI keeps what its API is sent for up to thirty days to watch for abuse, longer only where the law requires, and does not train on it. The painted cover is kept so it can be printed, and we delete it when you ask.
Is a sitting free?
Your first four are. You see the cover before you pay, with the house name across it, and you pay only for the print you choose. The printed cover carries no watermark.
How long does delivery take?
Each canvas is made after you pay and shipped tracked, usually two to three weeks door to door. We ship within the United States only for now.
Can I cancel?
Yes, within the hour. Every order waits an hour before it goes to the lab, and a reply to the receipt inside that hour cancels it and refunds you in full. After that the canvas is being made for you; a damaged or misprinted one is replaced.
Who runs Robber Baron?
PaintedApp, LLC, which operates the Specie houses. Write to support@painted.app, or by post to 1327 SE Tacoma St #394, Portland, OR 97202. The house is new, and no edition has sold yet.