Printmaking

The Christ Church art room in Oxford has become a second home for me. I first went over a year ago, and I’ve been going every week in term for 4-5 hours, learning lino printmaking. I am fond of the medium, the place, the teacher, everything. This will be a collection of pieces I made and cool experiences I’ve had.

The art room

The beginning, winter 2023

I was one of the first people that went to the art room; in the beginning it was tiny and scrappy, and it only supported lino. We barely had a printing press: somehow we made do with a flower press and a laundry mangle. Sarah, the art room owner, had this magic of making anything work.

I enjoyed making small, cute, graphic prints that I could print off loads and share with people (e.g. Christmas cards, thank you notes). Lino was addictive for me because even simple designs look reasonably good— at least to the beginner’s eye.

my first lino print ever

and the second one

After a few prints, I attempted something more complex: Merton College’s Chapel. The window detail, deciding what should be dark and light, made this one challenging, but very fun!

Early inspiration

I met David Weller in the art room, a gardener at Christ Church who studied art and makes detailed landscape prints, as seen below. The mark-making, the use of different textures (as opposed to shape and negative space) reminded me of how I like to draw. This is a piece by him; I am inspired by the way different textures appear cohesively in the same piece.

At the beginning of 2024, I had a transformative visit to the art studio at 50 Hurst Street: they had an open day for people to visit. It was a beautiful studio, where several talented printmakers are based.

I was particularly drawn to this reduction lino print of the woods by Rosie Fairfax-Cholmeley: It was so much more sophisticated than anything I had done. My prints dealt with just shape; this was about everything that classical painting requires you to know: composition, colour, form, texture! Seeing this work really influenced my next piece…

The Kyoto Print

In the holiday before this term, I visited Kyoto and took this photo on a late-night post-rain wander.

The way the light hit the cracks in the stone paving, the lighting, the wood, something about this image just takes me back. And also, it looks like the perfect candidate to be a multi-colour print! I am more comfortable with architectural shapes, like this, than nature, like the forest print that initially inspired me.

I spent most of the term making this:

This print is a reduction, meaning that I carve the block, print one colour, then carve the same block, print the next colour, and so on. As a result, I cannot make more of this one! This was definitely the most challenging print I’ve worked on: converting the original image to 3 colours, aligning the block each time I printed, staying consistent with the project over weeks, choosing textures. There are few things I make that I am pleased with, and this is one of them.

This is the print without the final black layer and the block itself:

An adventure in typesetting

Oxford is where some of the first books were printed. Art room regulars made a visit to the Bodleian Bibliographic Press, where a lovely man by the name Richard taught us how it was done.

I’m a big fan of the press with the bird on the right. Things used to be made so beautifully.

Essentially, letter blocks like these:

are placed in a ‘frame’ to make text: and clamped so that they don’t fall out.

Then the frame is inked and printed onto a sheet of paper using a press (like the Albion, but there are other types too). The outcomes were something like this:

A fun fact is that while Shakespeare is credited for making up many words, it is possible that many were the result of errors in the typesetting. Typesetters were not very educated, paid poorly, and generally tried to finish their work quickly to run off to the pub, and as a result early print had numerous errors.

Recently, I went back to help Folly Magazine produce invites for their first launch. It was a super fun process! The image was not carved by me, it’s one that the Bodleian has stored. I wonder how old it is.

Volume

In early 2025, I felt like doing many smaller prints to iterate. Here are my favourites:

the press I make prints on. My art teacher asked to keep one for herself, and I was really flattered

Hoping to take on a more ambitious project now! Probably a multicolour larger landscape.