Soft launching for UK & US customers.
“I'm a printmaker in my spare time, and make all the prints from start to finish.”
Megan takes commissions. A block cut for you: a house, a plant, an animal, a scene that means something to somebody, carved and printed by hand in whatever number you want, down to a single print. She has been making custom pieces for buyers for years. Tell her what you have in mind and she will tell you what it needs.
A reduction linocut eats the block it came from. Megan Tailford cuts a layer, prints it across the whole run, then cuts away more of the same block and prints the next colour on top of the first. By the last layer there is almost nothing left to carve. However many she pulled is however many will ever exist, and then the block is finished.
None of it is reproduced. A hand-pulled print is not a photograph of a painting run off on a machine: the block is the artwork, the ink goes on by hand, every sheet is pulled by hand, and she signs each one. She cuts, prints, dries, signs and packs the lot herself, and when she runs out of paper she has been known to make more of that too.
The subjects do not obviously belong together and she has never tried to make them. There is a series of witches, ten of them now, each a small square: green witch, bog witch, sea witch, vampire witch. There is also a crocodile lying in honeysuckle, snowdrops wrapped around a swan, candlesticks in sherbet colours, and a retrofuturistic raygun. Everything is sketched individually, carved into lino by hand and pulled by hand, which is why no two prints in a run come out quite identical, and she will tell you that is the point rather than the flaw.
The paper is chosen for the piece, not bought in bulk. Japanese Sunome Senaka at 52gsm is translucent enough that she encloses a sheet of acid-free white backing with every print so the colours hold once it is framed. Somerset at 250gsm is a soft, matte paper that holds the sharp detail needed for the small Witch prints. Handmade Nepalese Lokta adds a natural background to prints with a more botanical theme. She also mills her own paper out of her misprints and junk mail, and sells it in packs.
She has been cutting lino for about eight years and selling the prints for six, fitted around a full-time job she does remotely, and she is about to move to a house with a room she can give over to printing.
Megan trades as Strange Meadows. She has been cutting lino for about eight years and selling the prints for six, fitted around a full-time job she does remotely. She works on her own from start to finish: carving the block, mixing the ink, pulling each print by hand, signing each one, and numbering the editions.
Oil-based inks on archival paper, chosen piece by piece. Soft, matte Somerset at 250gsm, sturdy Strathmore satin at 300, translucent Japanese Sunome Senaka at 52gsm, handmade Nepalese lokta, and dyed Thai mulberry when bright background is needed. Where a paper is translucent she encloses a sheet of acid-free white backing so the colours hold once it is framed. Packaging is recyclable or compostable, and she mills her own paper out of misprints and junk mail.
