Oak Knoll

Limited to 900 numbered copies, of which this is one of 874 copies bound by Green Street Bindery using Bugra-Bütten covers. Printed on Zerkall mould-made paper using Walbaum and Stern typefaces using a Heidelberg Cylinder SBB. The illustrations are printed from lemonwood blocks engraved by the artist. These sheets are the last to come from the Zerkall Mill which was forced to close following the Ahr Valley floods in 2021.

From the artist's website: The Hill is a celebration of collaborative work between author & engraver, between word & image, between the hand and the machine. We built our house around that view, the hill is the be all and end all of living right here.

Echoing from the time that a dozen monks quietly dug, a Victorian farmer stopped for a piss, a buried bomb hissed, voices past & present mingle in and around the powerful wood-engravings of Hilary Paynter. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes disturbing, the images and the text combine to hint at the changing nature of a place . . . so often caused by the people whove frequented it.

The history of enclosure, agriculture, ownership, urban planning, silviculture, all at the tip of Mum's finger and she talks us around the hill, pointing. One corner, two three. The whole of human history witnessed, in a story for me, less than a shaving off her fingernail, if her body is earth's longevity.

Green and black bags hanging from hawthorn, briar-thick undergrowth with desire lines of human and non-human routes. Decay and regrowth and a bloom of white fungus on a body-shaped log.

This book is a work of art, and a unique opportunity to own a series of engravings and an original text that has been pasted together at every stage by two outstanding creative talents at the peak of their powers.