Elly Rowbotham Printmaker | Products | Cornflower Love Heart - Original HandPrinted LinoCut Card |
The Makers

Elly Rowbotham Printmaker

Elly Rowbotham Printmaker

Profile picture of Elly Rowbotham Printmaker

About Elly Rowbotham Printmaker

Original LinoCut HandPrinted cards, hand-folded using mold made paper, hand torn to size according to convention (ensuring the deckle edge is incorporated as much as possible). Cards are blank inside for a hand written message.¶ I keep the tradition of typesetting & letterpress alive by using metal moveable type for all written text. On the back of my cards, my signs, text for wedding invites & other commissions.¶ My methods & tools are traditional (only hand tools used), I hand build & cut my image blocks. My presses, type & tools are linked directly to the old print industry - I was lucky to acquire them when they were being discarded by commercial printers in favour of 'new fangled' desktop publishing in the 1980s.

Further Info

Specialised in
Relief block building to type high & cutting (images), Typesetting & printing with movable metal type (text). Hand inking & press inking. Paper tearing. I’ve studied typography & layout grids, with particular interest in the grids behind early illuminated manuscripts. I used to teach digital layout on accredited courses, using my knowledge of typesetting, letterpress & layout to provide a tangible insight into the principles & the language of digital typography & layout software, which is replete with the print industry terminology from which it grew. Graphic Design BA (Hons), PGCE
Open to the Public?
No
Provides Course / Training
No
Available for Craft Fairs
Available - please ask about pricing

Contact

Helston
Cornwall
GB
elly@thesmallprinter.co.uk
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Cornflower Love Heart – Original HandPrinted LinoCut Card

I love Cornflowers, they make a wildflower patch zing!

This is my 2nd-in-series inspired by Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Thallo is the ancient greek goddess of spring, protector of new growth – her name means ‘bloom’. In his painting Botticelli has purposefully decorated Thallo’s garment in beautiful cornflowers – I adore his execution of them & sketched my cornflowers from his painting, paying attention to the blossoms (his genius, simple brush strokes) and intertwined stalks & buds, which I then attempted to apply, in this cut Lino print, to form the heart.

In folklore, cornflowers are worn by young men in love. So here they are, fashioned into a lover’s heart…

Hand-inked, Hand-printed linocut Card, with metal letterpress text hand-printed on the back, on my old Albion Press.