Karl Kasten studied intaglio printmaking at Iowa with Mauricio Lasansky, where experimentation was encouraged, with imagery and techniques being pushed to the edges of the artist's abilities. Iowa student Glen Alps developed a method of printing from the surface of the plate he called a "collagraph" which Karl Kasten uses for this image.
"Byzantium" is a collagraph that Kasten did a series of variant editions from. The composition is composed mostly of separate shapes, attached to a rigid plate and rolled with ink onto the surfaces. Viewed with a raking light the print surface reveals a number of "platemarks" impressed into the image. He printed various proofs using different colors on different elements. This impression, with a stenciled yellow and red was printed in a variant edition of 10."Byzantium" was an experimental work Kasten did while teaching printmaking at the University of California, Berkeley.