Rooksmoor Press: The preservation of Britt Willoughby’s ‘Absorbed by the Beauty’

Britt’s limited-edition, two volume book can be purchased in the Boutique at Thyme.

Hiding in plain sight, down a street in the centre of the artistic town of Stroud, you’ll find a magical historic printing press called Rooksmoor Press owned by Katie Beard.

Astonishingly, the whole press was transported here piece by piece on the back of a lorry. The only way to get it through the door was with a sledgehammer. Katie is not afraid of going to extreme lengths in the name of creativity.

It is here in Rooksmoor Press that the limited editions of exquisitely bound and printed volumes that accompany Britt Willoughby’s ‘Absorbed by the Beauty’ exhibition came to life. It feels like stepping back in time, breathing in the distinctive scent of ink as we take in all the treasures, miniature books, illustrated poems, and towers of boxes of fonts with familiar names and admire the giant industrial printing machinery.

Britt and Katie initially met working on a book called ‘A Year in the Garden.’ After learning about Rookmoor Press and bonding over a shared love of traditional arts and crafts, they began exploring ideas for a project together.

One winter, as Britt was growing rare historic tulips, the idea suddenly came to her: to produce a treasured little book of her tulip photographs.

‘‘I wanted to have it produced as if it were an old-fashioned plate. So each image was debossed, pressed into the paper, with Katie's beautiful metal cast type underneath,’’ says Britt.

She needed there to be an element of revelation inside the book itself too, so she sourced a beautiful Japanese tissue paper, 12 grammes in weight. Then she took the idea to Katie and was astonished when she said this could become a reality.

‘‘When we first started talking about it, I thought it might have just been a digital book originally. But the more I thought about it and the more we discussed the rarity of the tulips, the photography, and everything else, it was clear then that we needed to do something really special with it,’’ says Katie.

Together they selected the ten images and discussed the different printing processes as well as ornaments and type. Britt loved the black and white, but others loved the colour versions, so they decided to create two equally beautiful volumes.

‘‘It was quite clear that we needed to do both just to satisfy our own desire for it as well,’’ Says Katie.

‘‘We had lots of different ideas; some of them were completely unreasonable, and some of them would have been too simple. We wanted to make something truly special, and so we said, well, let's see how we can combine the photography, which will be printed on a litho press with the traditional letterpress, because that marries the two different mediums really well.

So, I sort of agreed to everything in principle without necessarily knowing exactly how it would come together, but we did lots of testing and lots of putting things together. The debossing of the images was a little bit of a challenge because obviously the images were pre-printed, so I had a plate made with these that are the same size and shape and overprinted that myself.

Then we had a lot of discussion about what sort of type, how much type, and what we wanted to say. And I think, again, simplicity and leaving the beauty of the images to speak for themselves was the main thing. Britt's wording on how she felt about the images needed to go with. So I typeset that in and cast it in hot metal, which is my specialism.

This meant that we could have full control over the type and produce something in a truly historic way that went with the vintage history of the Tulips. And then when it came together, we wanted to put in the Japanese tissue overlay, so that was an insert that was hand stuck over each image. They were bound into the books themselves, all trimmed up and then presented in a beautiful box.

It’s marrying digital and traditional and making a real treasure, which was always the intention, and I think it's been a really lovely thing to be able to combine those two elements.

There's something very different about it because there's only a handful of people in the country who can cast metal type, specifically typeset and casting, and then printing. So, it was a real privilege to be able to do it. I was thrilled with the results,’’ says Katie.

‘‘It felt like a dream. To pass on my initial idea and to have it actually created into a physical object was just incredible. It was a magical, magical moment to see it actually printed,’’ says Britt.