About the service
Cyanotype is the oldest photographic process I know that still behaves like drawing rather than like printing. I mix the light-sensitive iron solution myself, in the workshop, wearing gloves and with the extractor running, and I lay it onto the sheet with a wide brush. A machine would put the coat down as a perfect rectangle; a brush will not, and that is exactly why every sheet keeps its own living edge — a soft, uneven border that tells you a person stood over it. You can ask for a broad painterly frame, a narrow one, or a clean rectangle masked off with tape.
From there the image arrives in one of two ways. A contact print needs a large negative the size of the finished sheet, so I output it in advance from your picture — this is how your own photographs become prints, and for that I need a file in good resolution, the larger the better. A photogram needs no camera at all: grasses, ferns, feathers, lace and cut paper are laid straight onto the touch-dry coating and pressed under glass. Exposure happens in direct sunlight, eight to thirty minutes depending on the season, or under a UV lamp when the weather refuses to cooperate. Then comes the wash in plain running water until every trace of the yellow-green unexposed coating leaves the sheet. At that moment the print looks pale and frankly disappointing, and that is normal: over the next twenty-four hours the iron oxidises, the blue darkens and gathers the full depth of Prussian blue, so the work is only worth judging the following day. If blue is not what you are after, I tone the dried sheet in strong black tea and the whole scale moves into warm brown or smoky violet.
I print on heavy cotton rag paper and on natural fabric — a tee, a tote bag, a linen panel, a cushion cover. Safety is my side of the deal: the chemistry is prepared, used and washed out only in the workshop, in gloves and with ventilation, and spent solutions go to proper disposal, never into a river, a lake or a storm drain. The finished print is harmless, safe to hold, to hang and to wear, but it comes with two honest limits. Never wash a cyanotype with alkaline powder or bleach — alkali destroys the blue and it does not come back; cool water and a neutral or mildly acidic soap only. And keep the work out of permanent direct sunlight: over years, unbroken sun lightens the image, while a shaded wall or a glazed frame holds the depth for decades.
What the work includes:
— prints from your own files — contact printing from a negative I output to size
— photograms from plants, lace and found objects, composed together with you
— printing on cotton paper, from small sheets up to large formats
— printing on tees, tote bags, linen panels and cushion covers
— tea toning into brown and grey-violet instead of the classic blue
— a test strip and a proof sheet before the run, with the tone approved by you
— small editions with identical framing and deliberately different edges
— turnaround usually five to fourteen days, longer through a long grey spell
— a written care and washing sheet packed with every order
From there the image arrives in one of two ways. A contact print needs a large negative the size of the finished sheet, so I output it in advance from your picture — this is how your own photographs become prints, and for that I need a file in good resolution, the larger the better. A photogram needs no camera at all: grasses, ferns, feathers, lace and cut paper are laid straight onto the touch-dry coating and pressed under glass. Exposure happens in direct sunlight, eight to thirty minutes depending on the season, or under a UV lamp when the weather refuses to cooperate. Then comes the wash in plain running water until every trace of the yellow-green unexposed coating leaves the sheet. At that moment the print looks pale and frankly disappointing, and that is normal: over the next twenty-four hours the iron oxidises, the blue darkens and gathers the full depth of Prussian blue, so the work is only worth judging the following day. If blue is not what you are after, I tone the dried sheet in strong black tea and the whole scale moves into warm brown or smoky violet.
I print on heavy cotton rag paper and on natural fabric — a tee, a tote bag, a linen panel, a cushion cover. Safety is my side of the deal: the chemistry is prepared, used and washed out only in the workshop, in gloves and with ventilation, and spent solutions go to proper disposal, never into a river, a lake or a storm drain. The finished print is harmless, safe to hold, to hang and to wear, but it comes with two honest limits. Never wash a cyanotype with alkaline powder or bleach — alkali destroys the blue and it does not come back; cool water and a neutral or mildly acidic soap only. And keep the work out of permanent direct sunlight: over years, unbroken sun lightens the image, while a shaded wall or a glazed frame holds the depth for decades.
What the work includes:
— prints from your own files — contact printing from a negative I output to size
— photograms from plants, lace and found objects, composed together with you
— printing on cotton paper, from small sheets up to large formats
— printing on tees, tote bags, linen panels and cushion covers
— tea toning into brown and grey-violet instead of the classic blue
— a test strip and a proof sheet before the run, with the tone approved by you
— small editions with identical framing and deliberately different edges
— turnaround usually five to fourteen days, longer through a long grey spell
— a written care and washing sheet packed with every order
