Our story
Kommon Objects is a small studio in Bucharest. We choose the work, have each print made to order at a specialist lab in the EU, and name the source of every image.
A small studio, in Bucharest
Kommon Objects is run by Rareș Manolache. There is no warehouse. Every work in the Archive was chosen by hand, one at a time, and if something arrives wrong you are writing to the people who chose it.
Two things, kept apart
The Archive is a permanent collection drawn from open museum sources: the Rijksmuseum, the Met, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Biodiversity Heritage Library and others. All of it is in the public domain. Every entry names its artist, its year and the collection the work belongs to, where the museum record gives them. Where the record is silent, the line stays blank.
Collections will be new work, commissioned from living artists, a few times a year. The first one is not out yet. When it is, the people on our list hear first.
Paper, ink, frame
Nothing is held in stock. Each print is made after you order it, on enhanced matte paper of 200 grams per square metre, with pigment inks. The surface is smooth and does not reflect the room, so fine detail in a woodcut or a botanical plate stays legible from across a room. At 200 g the sheet is about a third heavier than poster paper and lies flat once it has settled.
Framed prints go into a box frame: a 20 mm face, 33 mm deep, in black, oak or white, glazed, with the print running to the edge of the opening. No mount. The frame is assembled at the lab and arrives ready to hang. The framed price is the same in all three colours.
Unframed prints travel rolled and arrive slightly curled. A day flat under a few books settles them. Not every size matches a ready-made frame; where one does not, a framer will make one to size, or choose ours.
A few days more, on purpose
We needed a lab that would make one print at a time, on this paper, in every size in the Archive, and frame it in the same building so that the framed print is packed once and travels once. We also needed a lab that had done this for years, because a print that arrives with a corner knocked in has failed however good the paper was. That lab is elsewhere in the EU.
The cost of that choice is time. An order is dispatched within two to three working days of being made, and the courier then takes two to five working days to most EU addresses. The whole journey is four to eight working days. Nothing about the printing can be hurried, so we do not sell a faster option. If you need a print by a particular date, write to hello@kommonobjects.com before you order and we will tell you whether it can be done.
What you pay for is the choosing, the preparation of the file, the paper, the ink, the frame, the packing, the courier and the tax. The image itself is free; most of the museums publish the files, and if a file is what you want, take it.
A short list
No AI-generated art and no AI-generated rooms. When we photograph a print on a wall, it is a real wall in a real room, and we say whose.
No limited editions and no fake scarcity. Every print in the Archive stays available.
No guessing at provenance. Every piece names its artist, year and source where the record exists, and leaves the line blank where it does not.
No public discount codes and no sales before 2027.
Paid up front, named on the work
Artists we commission will be paid up front and keep a share of every print sold. Their name goes on the product page, in the parcel and on the label beside the print wherever it hangs. That is the deal, and it will not change.
If you make things and want to be part of this, write to hello@kommonobjects.com.