The Sheet
From the existing archive
£340
- One sheet from a current edition
- Somerset or Zerkall rag
- Numbered and signed at the plate mark
- Rolled on an ash batten
Work
Six services, one bench, and a waiting list.
Everything below is done in this building by the three of us. Nothing is sent out, nothing is sub-contracted, and if a job wants something we do not do, we will tell you who does.
Commissioned surveys01
Chain, level, staff and a notebook, on the ground, at the state of tide that matters. Estates, foreshore, parkland, parish and manorial boundaries, watercourses, and anything where a disputed line has to hold up. We fix to surviving Ordnance benchmarks where there are any and set our own where there are not.
Eleven days for four miles of river. Longer in winter.
Copperplate engraving02
Cut in reverse with a burin into rolled copper, sixteen or eighteen gauge. Every letter by hand: water in italic, land in roman, the convention that has not needed improving since Ogilby. A hand-cut line holds to four thousandths of an inch and takes a correction forty years later.
Four to nine months at the bench, depending on the sheet.
Editions & printing03
Forty sheets, damped overnight and pulled one at a time on No. 4. Somerset Satin or Zerkall rag; Charbonnel ink, wiped by hand so no two sheets carry identical plate tone. Numbered and signed at the plate mark, then flattened under boards for a week.
About a fortnight for a full edition of forty.
Plate restoration04
Struck, corroded, scratched or worn plates brought back into printing condition. We knock up from the reverse, re-cut only what is demonstrably lost, and proof at every stage. Where a line cannot be established from the plate or from an early impression, it stays out — we will not invent one.
Assessment and a written condition report before any work: £180.
Chart correction05
Coastlines move — the Rother moved its mouth by four hundred yards in a single winter. We re-survey the changed stretch, burnish out what is wrong and cut the correction into the existing plate, so an edition stays current instead of becoming a historical document by accident.
Subscribers to the Correction Notice hear first.
Mounting & framing06
Linen-backed with wheat starch and rolled on an ash batten, or framed in oak with museum glass and a reversible hinge mount. Both done at the back bench. Neither is sent out, which is why neither comes back with somebody else's tape on it.
Framing from £145. Backing and battening from £90.
What you are actually buying
Most of the cost is boots, not copper.
A twenty-two by fifteen inch plate is about £70 of metal. The other ninety-odd per cent of a commission is two people on the ground for a fortnight and one at the bench for half a year. That is the whole economics of it, and it is why we quote in seasons rather than weeks.
It is also why we would rather turn work down than rush it. A plate cut badly is not a cheap plate; it is a plate.
Rates
Three ways in
Everything is quoted properly after we have seen the ground. These are what the last three years have actually cost.
The Survey
Walked, cut and printed · most commissions
£1,850
- Up to four miles walked, twice
- Fair copy at final size, approved by you
- Single plate, hand-lettered
- Edition of forty, three of them yours
- Corrections free for ten years
The Archive
Estates, institutions, whole holdings
£4,600
- Multi-sheet survey, plates numbered as a set
- Existing plates assessed and restored
- Condition report on the whole holding
- Framing or backing for the full set
- Corrections free for twenty-five years
Honest timings
How long things take
11
Days walking, 4 miles
6
Months at the bench
14
Days to pull an edition
9
Commissions a year
Asked often
Before you write
Can you work from drone or satellite imagery?
We will look at it, and we will not draw from it. Imagery tells you where a boundary appears to be on the day it was flown. It cannot tell you where a ditch was moved to in 1954, and that is usually the question somebody is paying us to answer.
How far ahead are you booked?
Usually a season, sometimes two. We will give you a real date rather than an optimistic one, and if we slip we tell you the week it happens rather than the month it becomes obvious.
Do you sell the plate itself?
Yes, once the edition is pulled, and it costs about a third again. Most people leave it in the racks here so that corrections stay possible. Either way the plate is yours and it will not be reprinted without you.
Can you match an existing plate in a set?
Usually. Send a good photograph of an impression and we will tell you honestly whether the lettering can be matched. Nineteenth-century house styles vary more than people expect, and a near-miss across a set is worse than an honest difference.
Tell us the ground and the deadline.
Both, honestly, in the first message. It saves a fortnight of letters and it is the fastest way to find out whether we are the right press for it.