There’s a pub in Wareham, Dorset, called the Horse & Groom, the kind of place where an hour becomes three without anyone noticing. At some point last winter, I found myself wanting to hold onto that feeling, so I carved it into a lino print.
The process is slower than you might expect. You work with a small gouge, removing everything that won’t carry ink, and what’s left becomes the image. It’s therapeutic in a way that’s hard to explain. You forget everything else going on and focus only on what’s in front of you. For the Horse & Groom, I carved the brickwork, the lamp posts, the window boxes, the barrel tucked at the side. Birds lifting off above the roofline. Winding around the whole composition, a grapevine border, because the ink I chose was a deep aubergine, a nod to the French house red.
The print is a one-off. It now hangs on the pub’s wall alongside everything else they’ve collected over the years, and I think that’s one of the best things a piece of art can do, disappear into a space it belongs in.
What I’ve come to understand through making work like this is that people don’t just want art for walls, they want art that holds something, a place they return to, a building with meaning, a street that feels like home. The rooms that stay with us almost always contain something specific, an object or artwork that anchors the space without announcing itself.
Lino printing suits this well. The slight unpredictability of the carved line, the way ink settles into paper, each print carries a quality that can’t be replicated exactly. For spaces that are already layered and considered, that handmade quality adds depth rather than noise.
I’m increasingly drawn to working on bespoke commissions built around meaningful places, a much-loved home, a building with history, somewhere returned to again and again. If that’s something you’re exploring, I’d love to hear about it.
Calver x
