Christine's Desk

This is where I work when I am not printing. Right now the board is covered with tiny pressure print experiments to work out, for my new book, how printing might have been discovered in one room over one night, from necessity, rather than across the world in over a thousand years.

Some essential starting points were a cardboard box, research into images in early books and experiments with simple printing. These are though, sometimes a mad excuse to defer making the final printed page.

I was encouraged by this printing plate above, created with great intensity by a small group of children. They recently made their first collagraphs with me, inspired by illuminated manuscript images from the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. I am trying a new approach; making pressure print collages from found materials before turing them into collagraphs.

The yellow desk in the top image is MKDC circa 1970. The wallpaper probably dates from then!