Beginnings

Spine labels are the unlike­ly start point for what is prob­a­bly the finest mak­er of books in Britain. Gra­ham Moss’ back­ground in teach­ing His­to­ry led to paper con­ser­va­tion, turn­ing in to a book repair busi­ness. Under­stand­ing how a book comes togeth­er meant a short step to bind­ing, and bind­ing needs those tiny print­ed slips — labels, book-plat­ed, binders’ tick­ets. Gra­ham got hold of a small Adana press in 1990 to print these com­po­nents of the books he bound and repaired.

The more Gra­ham exper­i­ment­ed, the more he found the lim­i­ta­tions of this small press, and he bought an Arab. This had to be host­ed in the back yard shed, which opened on to Incline Road, Old­ham. The Incline Press was born. By 1993 the suc­cess of book repair helped Gra­ham leave teach­ing.

First Books

A chance meet­ing with illus­tra­tor Peter Carter arrived at the same time as pur­chase of a first edi­tion of The Desert­ed Vil­lage, a 1770 poem about depop­u­la­tion and the pur­suit of exces­sive wealth. Carter’s illus­tra­tion pro­vid­ed the title-page and this was teamed with Baskerville from John Eick­hof­f’s Acorn­type foundry.

Enid Marx approached Gra­ham to ask if Incline Press would be inter­est­ed in col­lab­o­rat­ing on a new edi­tion of Nurs­ery Rhymes. Char­ac­ter­is­tic of the press, this book became the the first to be com­plet­ed, with the orig­i­nal Desert­ed Vil­lage shift­ing to sec­ond from Incline Press.

Incline Press Established

By 1999, Kathy Whalen, for­mer­ly the Man­u­scripts Librar­i­an at Bryn Mawr Col­lege near Philadel­phia, joined the press. This for­mi­da­ble part­ner­ship would dri­ve the press to pro­duce the most bril­liant work.

New machin­ery in the form of a large AutoVic arrived and more late­ly a Lud­low to cast slugs of new type. New premis­es were need­ed and an 1820s join­er’s work­shop became the new base for the press with machine room at ground lev­el, accom­mo­da­tion above and case room and bind­ing in the base­ment.

The press wel­comed two dogs, too. Red and Skip­per were the offi­cial com­pan­ion ani­mals of the Incline Press until the pass­ing over of Red in Novem­ber 2022.

The print­ing and life part­ner­ship that had been formed in 1999 between Gra­ham and Kathy was bro­ken in April 2020 when Kathy passed away fol­low­ing eight years of liv­ing with can­cer. A com­mem­o­ra­tive book, Memen­to Mori: Memen­to Vivere is in pro­duc­tion in a style that Kathy would have enjoyed — the vari­ety of papers, colours, styles and tipped-in pages.

Thirty Years of Printing

For thir­ty years, the press has been cre­at­ing won­der­ful books, but also the whole range of print­ing that a pro­fes­sion­al local job­bing house might pro­duce: let­ter­head­ings, broad­sheets, and of course labels. Each book is planned from scratch in metic­u­lous detail — not always the specifics of which page will host which words, but the right com­bi­na­tion of face, stock, colours and bind­ing.

Just as the weaver must choose her yarns, her colour­ways and her pat­tern before she can set about weav­ing her rug, so we select the type­faces, the illus­tra­tions, the cloth and paper for book and bind­ing, all of which is intend­ed to com­ple­ment the text that has first engaged us.”

Gra­ham Moss and Kathy Whalen, Incline Press: A Brief Illus­trat­ed His­to­ry, 2000

The pow­er of this approach came home to me when Gra­ham showed me Steel Hori­zon, a book about life on North Sea oil rigs, and for those left at home. The size of the book, the choice of indus­tri­al grey colours and sea-greens, words by Jonathan Won­ham and lino cuts by Nick Won­ham all come togeth­er.

Oth­er cre­ative part­ner­ships include this BBC Radio pro­gramme with Gra­ham instruct­ing Eliza Carthy on trea­dle press oper­a­tion as part of a pro­gramme on the Man­ches­ter Bal­lads.

2023

2023 opens a new chap­ter in the life of Incline Press. The amal­ga­ma­tion between the Wig­town Press and Incline Press is more than tech­ni­cal, with Helen and Gra­ham mar­ry­ing in April. More sig­nif­i­cant from a print­er’s point of view is the decen­ni­al spring clean!

As it cel­e­brates thir­ty years, the press con­tin­ues to pro­duce the most bril­liant work: from the small­est card to the most sump­tu­ous book.

I am per­son­al­ly indebt­ed to Gra­ham for being one of the first peo­ple to encour­age me in print­ing, to teach me more about the craft and to be gen­er­ous in shar­ing skills, knowl­edge and equip­ment with oth­ers just start­ing out. Thank you.

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Location

Bow Street, Old­ham, Lan­cashire

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Head­er Image: embed­ded from the Incline Press Flickr account.