Printmaking has long been close to our hearts. Our Printmakers Collection, launched some twenty years ago, brought together artists working across a range of techniques, linocut among them.
Over the last year it has evolved into our Contemporary Collection, expanding to include painters, collage artists and illustrators – though printmaking remains an important thread running through it.
Several linocut artists who feature in our range – Laura Boswell, Eric Gaskell, Joshua Miles, Ian Phillips, Rosanna Reade and Jane Walker – are currently exhibiting in LinoNorth, which continues at The Biscuit Factory in Newcastle until 29 November 2026. Find out more →
We’ve gathered some of our favourite linocut greetings cards and paper goods, including Advent calendars, gift wrap and notecards.
Explore our linocut selection →
How are linocuts made?
A linocut is a type of relief print. The image is carried on the raised surface of the block, with the areas not intended to print cut away. The block itself is linoleum, first produced as a floor covering in the 1860s: a mix of linseed oil, ground cork and resin pressed onto a hessian or canvas backing. Linoleum is softer than wood and has no grain, so it can be cut cleanly in any direction, and its fine surface takes ink evenly.
Most artists begin by drawing straight onto the block, generally in pencil or black Indian ink. They then clear away everything that won’t print with a knife or, more typically, with steel U- and V-shaped gouges. Because the block prints in reverse, the design is cut as a mirror image of the finished work.
Next, ink is rolled across the block and a sheet of paper, often a fine Japanese paper, is laid over it. The impression is taken in one of two ways. The artist can burnish the back of the sheet by hand with a wooden spoon or a baren, or they can use a printing press such as a cast-iron Albion or Columbian.
Colour is built up in layers. Transparent oil- or water-based inks allow overlapping colours to combine, creating further shades on the paper. This, along with the character of the incised marks, gives linocuts their distinctive quality. Some printmakers cut a separate block for each colour and register them carefully so that every layer aligns. Others use the reduction method, working from a single block and cutting more away between each colour. With this method the block is gradually destroyed, so the edition can never be extended or reprinted.
Linoleum began as an everyday domestic material, but artists took it up early in the twentieth century, the German Expressionists of Die Brücke among them. In Britain the medium had its moment in the 1920s and ’30s, when Claude Flight and the Grosvenor School promoted it as a modern, accessible way of making art. It remains one of the most direct and expressive forms of printmaking.
Explore our linocut selection →
Photographs
Banner:
Angie Lewin cutting one of the six blocks that make up her linocut ‘The Gardener’s Arms’ (photo: Alun Callender).
Top row:
Rosanna Reade making the first cuts into a drawn linocut block.
Angie Lewin cutting a block for her linocut ‘Larch and Berry’.
Christopher Brown working on his ‘Albion’ print (photo: Alun Callender).
Bottom row:
Christopher Brown proofing in his London studio (photo: Alun Callender).
Melvyn Evans taking an impression on his Albion press.
Vanessa Lubach editioning one of her multi-block linocuts.
