The Atelier 17 workshop had a lasting influence on 20th-century printmaking, due in large part to the range of significant artists who took advantage of its facilities and the experimental approach it fostered. The shop was founded in 1927 in Paris by the English artist Stanley William Hayter (1901–1988), who transferred its operations to New York during World War II.

In New York, Atelier 17 attracted not only American artists, such as Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, and David Smith, but also a range of international exiles, including Max Ernst, André Masson, Yves Tanguy, and, most notably, Joan Miró, whom Bourgeois befriended there. She first came to the shop in 1946, attracted by its artistic community and by the technical opportunities it provided. She said her French language skills were particularly appreciated by the non-English-speaking artists, yet she felt intimidated by Hayter himself, who she felt was a perfectionist printmaker.

At Atelier 17, Bourgeois delved into engraving, a specialty of the shop, and felt encouraged to experiment with soft ground etching, color stenciling, and a scorper technique of embossing. She also gave free rein to her practice of constantly revising compositions through versions and states. In all, she produced nearly 400 individual printed sheets during her time at Atelier 17, but she also continued to work on these prints at home, making use of the small press she had there. After her transition to sculpture in the later 1940s, Bourgeois left printmaking behind until much later in her life.

A New York art dealer and publisher of editions, Carolina Nitsch began her involvement with Bourgeois's prints in the 1990s as director of Brooke Alexander Gallery, where she included the artist's work in her inventory. Those prints were primarily from publisher Ben Shiff of Osiris imprint, and Nitsch continued working with Shiff and his prints after starting her own business in 2000. She eventually published her own editions with Bourgeois and also become her primary print dealer.

Nitsch's first Bourgeois publication, The Young Girl, came in 2006 as part of the benefit series she continues to produce for the New Museum. That print includes drypoint, hand coloring, fabric, and paper, a hybrid combination that is frequently found in Nitsch's work with the artist. In fact, Nitsch's publishing practice generally fosters the stretching of printmaking's traditional boundaries.

During Bourgeois's last years, Nitsch served a primary role, issuing highly significant projects such as Hours of the Day, a fabric book, and The Fragile, a multipart installation piece. For these, and other prints on fabric, Nitsch depended on Raylene Marasco of Dyenamix, a firm specializing in printing and dyeing textiles. She also relied on the collaboration of Bourgeois's assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, who facilitated the back-and-forth collaboration with the artist. Nitsch's publications culminated in Do Not Abandon Me, of 2009–10, a series Bourgeois worked on together with British artist Tracey Emin.

When Bourgeois began to work increasingly with fabric for her printed and editioned works, it was inevitable that specialized expertise beyond that available in conventional fine art printshops would become necessary. That was evident when she undertook the complex editioning of the fabric book Ode à l'oubli, with Judith Solodkin of SOLO Impression, and unusual talents were required. Through a friend in the fashion industry, Bourgeois found Raylene Marasco, founder of Dyenamix, a New York firm specializing in the dyeing and digital printing of textiles, who also had expertise in screenprint. Dyenamix was able to replicate the textures and patterns of Bourgeois's old and worn fabrics to a degree the artist deemed "fantastic," and they eventually became a primary resource for the many print projects on fabric that occupied Bourgeois's last years.

As with traditional printshops, the proofing process with Dyenamix involved back-and-forth exchanges, as Bourgeois chose among techniques, fabrics, and colors. For the series Lullaby, for example, the artist decided on the bold effects of screenprint, while the 36 elements in The Fragile are mostly digitally printed. Bourgeois worked with Dyenamix until the end of her life, completing Do Not Abandon Me in 2009–10 in collaboration with British artist Tracey Emin, and To Whom It May Concern in 2010 with writer Gary Indiana.

A New York–based intaglio printshop and publisher, Harlan & Weaver was founded in 1984, bringing together the skills of Felix Harlan and Carol Weaver. The firm collaborated with Bourgeois from 1989 until the last year of her life on nearly a third of her total print output, far more than any other printer.

Felix Harlan, with his gentle manner and specialized expertise, established an intimate working relationship with Bourgeois, spending several days a week at her house and becoming thoroughly attuned to her creative process. Initially, Harlan & Weaver was recommended to Bourgeois by Judith Solodkin of SOLO Impression, when Peter Blum Edition needed an intaglio printer for the Anatomy series, published in 1990. By the mid-1990s Harlan had refurbished Bourgeois's old printing press and set it up on the lower level of her house. Although suitable only for small-scale works, the press and its proximity accelerated the rate of Bourgeois's printmaking. Harlan added a second press in 2003, and also worked on projects at his shop's presses.

Whenever new proofs were ready, Bourgeois was filled with anticipation, averting her eyes while Harlan set them up; she wanted the "shock" of the first impression. Before leaving each day, Harlan placed proofs in blotters on Bourgeois's work table so that, in the morning, they would be ready for her to begin altering with hand additions. Many of Bourgeois's most important print projects, in her favored drypoint and in other intaglio techniques, were created with Harlan & Weaver.

Printmaking bracketed Louise Bourgeois's long career, with intense activity when she was starting out as an artist in the 1930s and 1940s, and then again in the last decades of her life. During both periods, Bourgeois was housebound: first, as she raised three young sons, and in old age, when she stopped going out altogether and worked at home. In the early years, Bourgeois printed on a small press she had purchased, and when she decided to issue the illustrated book, He Disappeared into Complete Silence, in 1947, she served as her own publisher.

Late in life, when she came up with an idea for a project and wanted to pursue it immediately, Bourgeois again took on the publishing role. She chose Lison Editions as her imprint, referring back to a childhood nickname (other nicknames included Lise, Lisette, Louison, and Louisette). With Lison Editions, Bourgeois published three major projects between 2006 and 2007: The Fragile and Hours of the Day were co-published with Carolina Nitsch Editions, New York; Lullaby was issued by Lison Editions alone. This was a moment when Bourgeois was working extensively with prints on fabric, collaborating with the printer, Dyenamix, New York, which specializes in fabric projects. In all, Bourgeois published some 100 individual compositions as Lison Editions.

Bourgeois's activity as publisher and printer differed in her two primary periods of printmaking: 1939–49 and 1989–2010. In the early phase, Bourgeois served as her own printer, at the Art Students League for lithography and at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 for intaglio. She also made prints at home, experimenting briefly with woodcut and linoleum cut and then purchasing her own press for intaglio printing.

At that time, conventional publishing was not a consideration, since Bourgeois was little known as an artist and, in addition, the print publishing apparatus in New York was modest at best. In any case, she was not thinking about editions. Printmaking was an experimental medium for her, serving as an offshoot of painting and drawing. When, in the later 1940s, she created the now-celebrated illustrated book He Disappeared into Complete Silence, she took on the task of publisher, underwriting the project, designing the housing, and attempting distribution; it met with little success. Soon after, she turned definitively to sculpture, and her work in printmaking stopped altogether.

By the late 1980s, Bourgeois was a well-known artist who attracted the attention of a number of publishers and printers. Soon her natural inclination toward printmaking, dormant for so many years, was reawakened and once again became an everyday activity. Her home, not any workshop, became the site of her collaborations. In the last years, she also brought in a seamstress, Mercedes Katz, who helped with the sewing of her fabric works. Occasionally, late in her life and for the sake of expedience, Bourgeois served as her own publisher under the name of Lison Editions. The word "Lison" was one of her childhood nickames; others were Lise, Lisette, Louison, and Louisette.

Benjamin Shiff, director of the Osiris imprint, played a major role in the re-emergence of printmaking in Louise Bourgeois’s practice in the late 1980s, and remained an important force in her creative use of the medium up until her last years. He worked with her primarily in two periods—the late 1980s to early 1990s, and then the 2000s, with an especially intense phase from 2005 to 2010.

Shiff took an experimental approach with Bourgeois, noting that he was “trying to get her into new territory.” Although not a printer himself, he worked side-by-side with the artist in sessions of several hours, keenly sensitive to possible directions a project might take. He depended on professional workshops for printing; in particular, Wingate Studio of Hinsdale, New Hampshire. His focus was on series, portfolios, and illustrated books—formats that allowed for expanded visual narratives. He also encouraged the artist to embellish her prints with hand additions and elements of text. Among his major early projects with Bourgeois was the illustrated book the puritan, of 1990, with a series of unique variants of its individual plates.

Bourgeois’s late work with Shiff constitutes a remarkably innovative body of printmaking. He brought large printing plates scaled to accommodate her work table and suggested soft ground etching, which vividly captured the marks made by the artist’s frail hand. The imagery she produced teems with biomorphic abstract forms, often enhanced with gouache, watercolor, pencil, and even fabric collage. In several cases these series—originating in the print medium—became monumental room-scale installations.

Peter Blum Edition was founded in New York in 1980, after Blum relocated from Switzerland. (He eventually opened galleries in both Soho and Chelsea.) His first contact with Bourgeois came in 1988, when he proposed her as a featured artist for Parkett magazine, which he cofounded. This developed into an active working relationship, and Blum was a contributing force in Bourgeois's reawakened interest in printmaking after a hiatus of nearly 40 years.

It was in conjunction with Blum's publication, Anatomy, that Bourgeois first worked with Harlan & Weaver workshop, leading to her long and definitive relationship with printer Felix Harlan. Blum published many highly significant projects with the artist, including the monumental Sainte Sebastienne and several books and portfolios, which were his special focus. He brought together Bourgeois and author Arthur Miller for Homely Girl, A Life, in 1992; published her autobiographical photographs and texts in Album, in 1994; and also was responsible for the 2004 edition of the fabric book, Ode à l'Oubli, a complex undertaking overseen by Judith Solodkin of SOLO Impression. Blum always maintained a friendly rapport with Bourgeois, enhanced by the fact that they occasionally spoke French together and also shared a love of books. He once delighted her with the gift of a 17th-century volume by a French midwife who wrote on fertility and childbirth. The midwife's name happened to be Louise Bourgeois.

As a young artist in 1992, David Procuniar began collaborating with his father Stephen Procuniar at the Procuniar Workshop, in Soho, New York. Established in 1970, the workshop focused on screenprinting but also developed other works of art on paper through "the lens" of printmaking's various techniques. Among the artists working at Procuniar were Richard Hunt and Lester Johnson, early on, and later, Nancy Spero, Jane Dickson, and others. The shop's motto was: "We never open...We never close," since being available when an artist was ready was of prime importance.

The younger Procuniar admired Louise Bourgeois's work and hoped to collaborate with her on print projects. They became acquainted at Bourgeois's celebrated Sunday "salons," to which she invited artists to stop by for the afternoon; Procuniar remembers taking part in some 50 to 100 such events. The two began collaborating in 2002, with the artist's assistant, Jerry Gorovoy, facilitating the process. Ultimately, Procuniar Workshop printed and published two major Bourgeois projects, comprising 44 individual compositions. Stephen Procuniar participated initially, but it was David Procuniar who established a working relationship with the artist, and an abiding affection for her. The elder Procuniar died in 2006. As of 2013, David Procuniar is pursuing an advanced degree in the history of printmaking, as well as a teaching position in the United Arab Emirates.

Master lithographer Judith Solodkin founded SOLO Impression in New York in 1975 and met Bourgeois soon after. They were neighbors at the time in the Chelsea neighborhood. With this background, Solodkin was a likely choice for Peter Blum Edition when Blum sought assistance for his early Bourgeois publications. It was she who suggested Harlan & Weaver for intaglio printing, leading to the long working relationship between the artist and Felix Harlan. Solodkin also hoped to engage Bourgeois in lithography, and had two stones delivered to her. However, Bourgeois never liked drawing on stone and Solodkin had to devise other ways of working. They eventually made lithographs together, as Bourgeois took a special liking to the vibrant color effects possible with that technique.

Solodkin welcomes technical challenges and produced Bourgeois's early multiples, including a garter piece for the Anatomy portfolio and a sewn page for Parkett magazine. When creating the monumental print The Song of the Blacks and the Blues, of 1996, she determined that collage elements would engage Bourgeois, and for Henriette, of 1998, she was not daunted when the artist wanted to dangle a leg made of paper, metal, and string from the surface of a lithograph. Solodkin faced her biggest challenge when editioning the 2002 fabric book, Ode à l'oubli, a remarkable achievement for her crew of 10 and also the impetus for a range of new techniques—especially with sewing—for her workshop.

Among Bourgeois’s major printmaking collaborators was Wingate Studio, a New Hampshire workshop where some 1,600 sheets were printed for the artist. The relationship, however, was not one of daily contact in the artist’s home/studio. Instead, the long-distance production was instigated and accomplished through the efforts of publisher Ben Shiff, of the Osiris imprint.

Shiff came to know Peter Pettengill, master printer of Wingate, in the latter half of the 1980s, when they worked together on several projects. Once Shiff began his collaboration with Bourgeois in 1988–89, he turned to Pettengill for his expertise in the intaglio techniques of engraving and soft ground etching, which Bourgeois favored.

Pettengill gained his skills at the esteemed Crown Point Press, in California’s Bay Area, before establishing his own workshop on the family farm in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. He continues to print and publish with a range of artists, but remembers his work with Bourgeois as among the high points of his studio practice. It often entailed unusual instructions, such as extensive selective wiping of the plates, or the printing of only partial elements of compositions. It was those fragments on large-scale sheets that were especially stimulating for Bourgeois as she finalized her vision with gouache, watercolor, and pencil additions. Her late burst of printmaking—when she was in her mid-to-late 90s—resulted from the unusual rapport Shiff established with the artist, and the confidence he felt in Wingate Studio to carry out the artist’s creative adaptations of the printmaking medium.