Get in touch
 020 7488 9800 
print@handandeye.co.uk

The story of our books

  • Photo fo Getting There by John Hunter

    Getting There,

    written and illustrated by John Hunter,

    was our first publication

    Button
  • Circus Minimus by Holly Skeet, illustrated by Christopher Brown

    Slide title

    One of the Paw Prints series, hand set in metal type with illustrations printed direct from the lino

    Button
  • The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, illustrated by Angela Barrett

    Slide title

    The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, illustrated by Angela Barrett

    Button
  • Dear Edward by Edward Bawden and Peyton Skipwith

    Slide title

    Dear Edward,

    the complete correspondence of Edward Bawden and Peyton Skipwith

    Button
  • A Christmas Carol illustrated by Angela Barrett

    Slide title

    A Christmas Carol, illustrated and hand-coloured by Angela Barrett

    Button
  • The Wind in the Willows illustrated by Judy White

    Slide title

    One of Judy White's eighty drawings for The Wind in the Willows 

    foil blocked on the cover of the Artist's Edition

    Button
  • A Far Away Country by Ruth Boswell

    Slide title

    A Far Away Country 

    takes place in Czechoslovakia during and after the Munich crisis

    Button

Books have always been important to us, and we printed our first one soon after buying an Adana table-top press in the mid-1970s. It took another fifteen years or so before we were properlyequipped for printing them, though, and after commissions for catalogues and booklets we issued the first publication under our own imprint in 2003. That was Getting There, an alphabet book of linocuts by John Hunter. Each letter was accompanied by a full-page image printed directly from the lino and each was on the theme of transport. The letter was printed on the facing page in large, red Gill Sans capitals from our wood type collection and there was a cryptic text next to it in hand-set black Bembo italic.


At about the same time we printed another lino cut alphabet book, this time cut by Christopher Brown for one of publisher Dennis Hall's Parrot Presses, which led to us collaborating on a series of short books. Unusually, the pictures came first and Holly Skeet wrote the words to fit them. Eventually there was a series of four, known as Paw Prints after the title of the first. Like all our subsequent books they were designed by Brian Webb.


Our next publication was The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Bound in black cloth, it was typeset in Monotype Plantin and printed on grey mould-made paper to give a suitably austere effect. The illustrations by Angela Barrett were painted in a matchingly sombre pallet. They were printed litho and tipped in.


By the time we started on another publication we had installed our own mechanical typesetting system, which opened up a number of possibilities. Angela again illustrated and we chose to do A Christmas Carol. She produced line drawings for all the chapter openings as well as a number of vignettes that were placed in the text. There was a special edition printed on Somerset paper in which some of the illustrations were hand-coloured.


After A Christmas Carol came Dear Edward, the complete correspondence of Edward Bawden, with his dealer Peyton Skipwith over the last twenty years of Bawden's life. Typeset in Eric Gill's Joanna Italic, it was illustrated with numerous Bawden drawings and lino cuts and David Gentleman wrote an introduction. It is still available from our shop.


By the time we came to print our next publication, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, we had replaced our typesetting system with a plate maker. Laying out the book digitally meant that the text and Judy White's illustrations could be integrated in a way that would have been almost impossible using metal type.


It was followed by A Far Away Country, again illustrated by Angela Barrett. She is currently working on one of our forthcoming titles, a new edition of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White.


Over the years we have also printed for other publishers, public and private. In 2007 we became the first printer of the Folio Society's Letterpress Shakespeare. More recently we printed If Not Winter for them, an edition of the complete surviving works of Sappho in both Greek and English. We have also worked for No Reply Press, Areté Editions and Lyra's Books among others.


We have lots of exciting plans which will be announced here and in our occasional newsletter in due course.




Share by: