The Grounds

€49,95

Pigment on 300 g cotton rag. Cold-pressed, matt, natural white. Uncut, with a margin of bare cotton around the motif.

Two sheets. See the sizes →

What arrives
The print, unframed and uncut, with its margin. That is it.

Rows of courts, hedged and set out in order, a game on each. There are, regrettably, not this many courts at the House. There is one. This is what the Cartographer drew when we asked what he would prefer.

Fine art pigment print on Epson Cotton Textured Natural, matt. Uncut sheet; the motif sits inside a white margin.

A3+ · 32,9 × 48,3 cm
A2 · 42 × 59,4 cm

Both sizes carry the same motif at the same proportion.

Volume I · The Paper

Cotton, pressed cold.

The sheet is 100% cotton rag, three hundred grams to the square metre, half a millimetre thick. Cold-pressed, so the surface keeps a soft tooth. Natural white, with no optical brighteners added — it is the colour cotton is. Move across it.

Corner of the sheet: cotton margin and the edge of the motif

Move to magnify

Cotton100% rag. No wood pulp, and nothing in it to go yellow on you.

NaturalNo optical brighteners. The white you see is the white it stays.

MattCold press, textured. Light sinks into it instead of bouncing off.

Glossy paper is brighter under shop lights. It also shows every fingerprint and every reflection of the room. We took the other trade.

The Print

Pigment, not dye.

How a sheet is made, in three steps and no hurry.

I

The file
Each print begins as one file, drawn for this sheet and no other. Nothing is cropped to fit a standard.
II

The press
Pigment inks, laid down by a fine art printer. Pigment sits in the cotton rather than soaking through it, which is why it holds its colour where dye lets go.
III

The sheet
Uncut, without crop marks. The motif sits inside a margin of bare cotton. Trim it, mat it, or leave it; the margin is yours.

We could put these through a poster press. They would arrive faster. They would not be the same object.

The Sheet

Two sizes. One margin.

Both sheets carry the motif at the same proportion, with bare cotton around it. Choose the wall, then the sheet.

A3+329 × 483 mm — the sheet in the photographs
A2420 × 594 mm — the larger of the two
MarginUncut, no crop marks. Trim it, mat it, or leave it. It is yours.

A3+ is the sheet for a hallway or a desk. A2 wants a wall of its own.

Keeping it

Behind glass, out of the sun.

Print in an old oak frame with a mat, on a white wall

GlassAny frame with glass. Museum glass if you like the print more than the window.
The matThe margin is cut for a mat. Let the mat sit on the cotton, not on the motif.
SunPigment is patient, but direct sun wins eventually. Hang it where the light is kind.