The Reading Room Press

THE BEGINNINGS

Having enjoyed the wood engraved image for as long as I can remember and having “had a go” myself I bought an Albion press to print all the engravings I was going to engrave. However I’d never been much of an artist and my first acquisition of type – two full cases of 60pt & 72pt Caslon sold/given to me by John Randle of the Whittington Press –quickly turned my head to the pleasures and fascination of typography and the printing of type.

The Reading Room Press, named after the cottage where we lived at the time, began in 2002. Activities were resumed in 2010 after a move to the edge of the Gloucestershire village of Quenington and the building of a new press room.

My main aspiration at the press is to publish – and print – items of literary interest particularly of my own literary heroes, so far Forrest Reid, A. S. J. Tessimond and T. E. Lawrence. 

It has also been a pleasure to commission wood engravers to illustrate these publications: Jane Lydbury, Paul Kershaw, Ian Stephens and Jim Westergard to date. 

Celebratory broadsheets, family wedding invitations, and other ephemera e.g. for Parenthesis have always been rewarding and great fun.