MY COUNTRY BUSINESS
LINO PRINTER ANNA SMITH
Lino printer Anna Smith carries out her successful homeware business from the kitchen table
Anna Smith has created a linoprinting business from her family home, nestled in the Surrey Hills. Her work captures an iconic mix of graphic, typographical and botanical designs. But at this time of year, it’s all about Christmas.
Her style is a definite nod to her family’s lifestyle – favourite mottos, visual references to the nature that surrounds them and singular words or emblems that echo moments throughout the year. ‘Ideas percolate all the time,’ says Anna. ‘I tend to begin with pencil scribes, often inspired by a phrase mentioned around the supper table, a sketch of a branch picked up on a walk, or a pine cone pulled out of one of my kids’ school trouser pockets.’
Once the house is peaceful and her family has departed for school and work, these ideas are worked up into concepts for Anna’s growing collection of cards and prints. ‘The process involves slowing down my usual hectic rhythm, starting with the preparation of my work area,’ says Anna. Without the luxury of a standalone studio, the family’s farmhouse table is where the magic happens. Daily clutter cleared, the vast wooden surface takes on a new creative identity, away from homework and meals. ‘It becomes my space,’ says Anna. ‘Materials are laid out – oil-based linseed inks, wooden-handled lino blades, piles of soft, deckled-edge Italian cotton papers and old tins full of my hand-cut linos.’ The table sits at the heart of the house, in the open-plan sitting and dining room. The bungalow, surrounded by oak trees, began life as a chicken shed, before being bought by Anna’s husband’s grandfather in 1935, who converted it into a home. The Smith family have lived and worked in the village for five generations – they previously owned the local garage and car workshop, and even ran the former village post office and sweet shop from what is now the family’s snug, where Anna hangs her prints to dry.
Anna grew up in Brighton and was always attracted to the creative arts, but it wasn’t until she enrolled at The Glasgow School of Art that she found her love of lino printing and typography. She went on to graduate with a First in Graphic Design before following a freelance career in London – at the same time that Apple Macs came to the fore. ‘In all the agencies I worked, handcrafted was >