Woodcut illustrations

Miriam Macgregor works in a small studio at her home near Whittington Press. She specialises in the delicate art of the woodcut, using very basic equipment. The block of wood is fastened to a potter’s old turntable, which Miriam has fixed to a sloping desk. Her tools are a set of very delicate, thin-bladed knives or chisels, one of which has the rather curious name of ‘spit sticker’. She starts by making a sketch of the subject as the basis for the cutting. This is intricate work: on paper, a line is simply drawn, but with a woodcut, the wood around the line has to be removed to leave it standing proud from the block. Curves are produced through a combination of hand movements and by keeping the hand still and rotating the turntable. The final result seems almost impossibly intricate and is a work of true craftsmanship and art. Miriam, who studied art at Hastings, started at the press as a compositor in 1976. It was then that she developed an interest in book illustration. Making woodcuts, however, never occurred to her. “I wanted to work on a huge scale,” she admits. However, she now loves the idea of her images being reproduced over and over again in book form.