The Weakest Link

William James once said “A chain is no stronger than its weakest link”.
That statement applies to many things in life, including the area of ink jet printing.  
I can remember back to the days of the original Iris printers, and I still marvel at how those devices set the stage for both digital fine art and photographic print making.  But, unlike previous technologies such as Lithography (a fancy word for offset printing) or Serigraphy  ( a fancy word for silk screening), early  inkjet printing wasn’t immediately welcomed into the world of limited edition art.  In fact it had to prove its legitimacy, and, one of the first proving grounds was the archival properties of its ink and media.
No one could contest the visual quality of an Iris print.  The vibrant CMYK dye inks could produce a color gamut beyond that of an RGB monitor.  But would it last?  Sadly, the answer was no—at least when comparing to a photographic print. Depending on the paper you used, you could expect anywhere from 3...