Birds and Grapes Paper - Peggy Angus

Birds is one of eight papers published by Cambridge Imprint in 2021 that recreate the patterns of the great designer, printer and educator Peggy Angus. Peggy Angus was a friend of Eric Ravilious, Tirzah Garwood, Edward Bawden and many other key figures in British art, illustration and design, who were active in the middle years of the twentieth century. She is particularly well known for her patterns which were used to decorate tiles and and to create the beautiful wallpapers that she block-printed herself by hand. To produce this pattern, a new print was taken from Angus’s original linocut, then reproduced the pattern lithographically in matte colour, using colour ways of the sort she most favoured, and reducing the scale to suit this new medium.

Cambridge Imprint is a small paper-making business in Cambridge, England, designing and printing patterned paper. It is known for beautiful colours, joyful illustration and typography, a lively, hand-drawn aesthetic, and meticulous attention to detail.

Using simple hand-stencilled screen-printing to create original designs, Cambridge Imprint employ spot-colour lithography to replicate the studio process in manufacturing the final paper product. The result is a matte paper of unparalleled intensity and clarity of colour, not to mention quality!

This original Cambridge Imprint design was created for Persephone Books, celebrated independent publisher of undeservedly forgotten twentieth century women’s writing. Persephone books are elegant in their uniform covers of gentle grey, each hiding a different patterned end paper within. This Persephone design has an appropriately early twentieth century Bloomsbury feel about it.

Cambridge Imprint paper is printed in England on FSC paper of archiving quality, using vegetable oil-based inks that are friendly to the environment. Each sheet is printed in one or two hand-mixed inks on uncoated 90 gsm paper to create a high quality matte paper with a hand-printed feel to it. A sheet of paper measures 50 cm x 70 cm.