Handprinted letterpress print, all profits supporting Medical Aid for Palestinians. Free shipping to all UK addresses (added automatically at checkout).
Robert Macfarlane's latest work, Is A River Alive? follows the flow of rivers around the world, in sensuous, synaesthetic writing; immediate in every sense. In the final section, Macfarlane kayaks for eleven days down the Mutehekau Shipu in Nitassinan/Quebec. It's a river that was under threat of death by drowning, at the hands of a huge hydroelectric project that would turn river into reservoir by means of massive dams. Robert tells the story of a how local communities rallied to defend their river against this fate, by declaring it as a river that is both alive and a bearer of rights, including the right to flow.
The whole book is liquid. Reading it, you are enchanted by little italicised turns of phrase ('Where does mind stop and world begin? Not as skull and skin, that's for sure.') or ('A tree is a river, bound in bark.'). We wanted to make something sensuous and solid, to honour the physicality of Macfarlane’s prose. Our letterpress print reproduces the text that flows over the final two pages of the book (spoiler alert!): a single slippery, sinuous sentence that marks a moment of more-than-human encounter, when Macfarlane reaches an immense waterfall at precisely the site where the hydroelectric dam would be built. As a prose-poem, it is one of the key achievements of his body of work – a qualian summoning to the reader of the aliveness of the river, which also reinforcing his work on behalf of the river and the Innu communities for whom it is both ancestor and lifeline.
Corran, our designer, traced the lines of the main rivers featured in Is A River Alive?: the Cam and its chalk streams (UK), the Río Los Cedros (Ecuador), the Chennai waterways (India) and the Mutehekau Shipu (Nitassinan/Canada), linking them behind the text of the poem in a dendriform body of river-channels. She made the print itself similar dimensions to a foldout map or cartographic scroll, with grid references as a border. Will J. Wood has set the text in Baskerville 12, and the title and text are letterpress printed with burnt umber ink on the Seedlings Press. This limited-edition print measures 42 x 15cm and is printed on antique Ingres mould-made paper from The Type Archive.
All the profits from this print are going to support Medical Aid for Palestinians, who have for forty years been delivering healthcare and medical aid to Palestinians, and whose work has never been more needed than now. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained recently that 'there are no fully functioning hospitals in Gaza, and only 14 out of 36 are functioning at all.' Seedlings has donated to MAP in the past, but this winter – with your help – we hope to make an especially large donation.
Handprinted letterpress print, all profits supporting Medical Aid for Palestinians. Free shipping to all UK addresses (added automatically at checkout).
Robert Macfarlane's latest work, Is A River Alive? follows the flow of rivers around the world, in sensuous, synaesthetic writing; immediate in every sense. In the final section, Macfarlane kayaks for eleven days down the Mutehekau Shipu in Nitassinan/Quebec. It's a river that was under threat of death by drowning, at the hands of a huge hydroelectric project that would turn river into reservoir by means of massive dams. Robert tells the story of a how local communities rallied to defend their river against this fate, by declaring it as a river that is both alive and a bearer of rights, including the right to flow.
The whole book is liquid. Reading it, you are enchanted by little italicised turns of phrase ('Where does mind stop and world begin? Not as skull and skin, that's for sure.') or ('A tree is a river, bound in bark.'). We wanted to make something sensuous and solid, to honour the physicality of Macfarlane’s prose. Our letterpress print reproduces the text that flows over the final two pages of the book (spoiler alert!): a single slippery, sinuous sentence that marks a moment of more-than-human encounter, when Macfarlane reaches an immense waterfall at precisely the site where the hydroelectric dam would be built. As a prose-poem, it is one of the key achievements of his body of work – a qualian summoning to the reader of the aliveness of the river, which also reinforcing his work on behalf of the river and the Innu communities for whom it is both ancestor and lifeline.
Corran, our designer, traced the lines of the main rivers featured in Is A River Alive?: the Cam and its chalk streams (UK), the Río Los Cedros (Ecuador), the Chennai waterways (India) and the Mutehekau Shipu (Nitassinan/Canada), linking them behind the text of the poem in a dendriform body of river-channels. She made the print itself similar dimensions to a foldout map or cartographic scroll, with grid references as a border. Will J. Wood has set the text in Baskerville 12, and the title and text are letterpress printed with burnt umber ink on the Seedlings Press. This limited-edition print measures 42 x 15cm and is printed on antique Ingres mould-made paper from The Type Archive.
All the profits from this print are going to support Medical Aid for Palestinians, who have for forty years been delivering healthcare and medical aid to Palestinians, and whose work has never been more needed than now. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus explained recently that 'there are no fully functioning hospitals in Gaza, and only 14 out of 36 are functioning at all.' Seedlings has donated to MAP in the past, but this winter – with your help – we hope to make an especially large donation.
Image 1 of 5
Image 2 of 5
Image 3 of 5
Image 4 of 5
Image 5 of 5