About Helen Morley
After working for 18 years as the warden of nature reserves in Kent, I took my Fine Art degree at the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury in 2011. Over the next few years I set up and ran a couple of community art and atelier projects sharing fine art skills with people who are excluded from higher education, and then moved to Wigtown, Scotland' official book town. It is a small and remote community of bookshops, cafes, musicians and artists who are all leaning towards the analogue in one of the most beautiful rural landscapes of the Machars peninsula and the Galloway hills.
I launched the press in spring of 2020. It is the UK’s newest analogue small press; publishing in Wigtown, Scotland’s official book town. The studio is open to the public from Easter until the annual Book Festival in October, offering my own work and selected materials from other small press printers. As far as I know, this is the only letterpress shop in the UK. Letterpress – or more accurately the craft of composing and printing moveable metal type or fount – is listed as an endangered craft by the Heritage Craft Association with less than 20 people working in it full time. The compositors of the past served a seven-year apprenticeship and there are very few time served printers working now. I am striving to learn what I can, repurposing the commercial techniques to make contemporary handmade artwork, and hopefully keep some of the skills and machinery alive.
There are various historical definitions of the concept of ‘private press’. My ambition is to set text to engravings, lino or etching prints in beautiful, hand bound limited edition books, chapbooks, broadsheets and other ephemera; exploring expressive contemporary printmaking and writing in a traditional medium. I am currently focussed on publishing text written by neurodivergent or unheard voices and Scottish poets, usually around themes of nature and botany.
Printing is a beautifully off grid, low impact artform using upcycled and antique tools, materials and machines. I have two homemade relief and intaglio presses, an Adana and a recently restored Victorian Cropper Minerva press, and I'm slowly assembling a basic collection of lead fount and tools. I’m also experimenting with engraving on acrylic plate which is comparable in quality to the more expensive wood engraving block, but larger in scale.
These magical analogue processes create end products which are exquisitely tactile, hand made and quietly sensual.
I also paint in oil, and this can be seen at www.helenmorley.co.uk
I launched the press in spring of 2020. It is the UK’s newest analogue small press; publishing in Wigtown, Scotland’s official book town. The studio is open to the public from Easter until the annual Book Festival in October, offering my own work and selected materials from other small press printers. As far as I know, this is the only letterpress shop in the UK. Letterpress – or more accurately the craft of composing and printing moveable metal type or fount – is listed as an endangered craft by the Heritage Craft Association with less than 20 people working in it full time. The compositors of the past served a seven-year apprenticeship and there are very few time served printers working now. I am striving to learn what I can, repurposing the commercial techniques to make contemporary handmade artwork, and hopefully keep some of the skills and machinery alive.
There are various historical definitions of the concept of ‘private press’. My ambition is to set text to engravings, lino or etching prints in beautiful, hand bound limited edition books, chapbooks, broadsheets and other ephemera; exploring expressive contemporary printmaking and writing in a traditional medium. I am currently focussed on publishing text written by neurodivergent or unheard voices and Scottish poets, usually around themes of nature and botany.
Printing is a beautifully off grid, low impact artform using upcycled and antique tools, materials and machines. I have two homemade relief and intaglio presses, an Adana and a recently restored Victorian Cropper Minerva press, and I'm slowly assembling a basic collection of lead fount and tools. I’m also experimenting with engraving on acrylic plate which is comparable in quality to the more expensive wood engraving block, but larger in scale.
These magical analogue processes create end products which are exquisitely tactile, hand made and quietly sensual.
I also paint in oil, and this can be seen at www.helenmorley.co.uk
