Spring has certainly sprung in the Incline Press workshop.  Over the winter we have been busy printing three new pamphlets which are now available in the online shop, and we are just preparing the prospectuses to post (if you’ve bought from us recently you will get a postal mailing. If not, please email us your street address to graham.moss@inclinepress.com)

The first publication is Song of the small hours, a poem by author Nancy Campbell and first published in The Spectator in 2022.  The typography is a response to the poem’s sense of rhythm. It is bound in a handmade paper commissioned from Two Rivers Mill, and the pages are sewn on strips taken from repurposed 19th century parchment documents. Nancy kindly wrote a new introduction and signed each copy on a recent stay with us.

Our second recent publication is Near Thursbitch, written and illustrated with a wood engraving by Peter S Smith.  It is a curious and oblique story about a memorial stone set in the hills of the Peak District, marking the mysterious death of a lone traveller. 

The third booklet is a chapbook poem written during the winter of 2023 called Eight Titles in Search of their Poem. However it is based on ideas that have been rolling around my head over the last few years.  It has been made entirely in the spirit of the traditional chapbook. Handmade paper, purely typographic apart from that Indian woodblock ornament; the best materials at the best possible price with only 100 copies printed.

While all this printing progressed, a major spring clean and re-order of the Incline Press workshops has also been underway.  We feel such a major event is only required every ten years or so, although it may have been missed in 2013.  It is likely we shall spend much time looking for items that have been ‘tidied up’ but such is the nature of a traditional printshop. 

This reorganisation has in part been necessitated by the happy amalgamation of Incline Press and Wigtown Press, and the arrival of new printing presses – at least, new to us.  The first is an Albion press, formerly owned by linocut printmaker and printer John Evans, and the second is a Model 4 press from the workshop of Whitstable printmaker, the late Ben Sands.

We had a couple of fun days selling work at Leeds University at their recent print fair, and Incline Press has also been featured in the April issue of The Small Printer magazine. This is an excellent publication issued by the British Printing Society, and which we would encourage anyone with an interest in printing, to join.  Their annual Wayzgoose in Dorset last weekend was a roaring success and we look forward to the next one.

UPCOMING: Work on printing and tip-ins for the upcoming publication of Memento Mori : Memento Vivere, continues. Publication will be later this year, and pre-orders are still available.