The University of Exeter worked with Princetown Press to create distinctive and meaningful booklets for policymakers to offer ways of thinking about ethics within Treescapes and landscape decision-making, drawing on MEMBRA’s Humanities research. Dr Katharine Earnshaw (Research Lead, Net Positive Centre at the University of Exeter), Emma Hogbin (Princetown Press), and Jon Palmer (Princetown Press) worked together on this unique way of expressing research. Princetown Press is in the heart of Dartmoor: an authentic old-fashioned letterpress printing workshop, where Emma and Jon have put Katharine’s words to paper in a limited-edition print-run, all hand-numbered.

Printed on British-made, recycled paper, using wild ink from native UK trees, these booklets are all unique and evolving: the tree-based ink inserts will transform over time due to their very nature - as hopefully will the policymakers’ perspective when discovering this modest piece of art.

The Text

What follows is the text for the pamphlet publication, Planting Questions.

Planting Questions

Katharine Earnshaw, University of Exeter

ethics, justice, memory, treescapes, language, history of thought, membra, time, future, form, emphasis, persuasion, truth

Here follow questions that can be applied to different policy contexts, focussing on ethics, with the idea that good questions can be efficient as well as effective.

Questions are openings.

TIME

When we use the word ‘future’, when exactly is that realised? What is our moral obligation to trees and to future generations (and are these different)? When is a treescape?

insere, Daphni, piros; carpent tua poma nepotes

Graft your pears, Daphnis; your grandchildren will pluck your fruits

Virgil Eclogues IX.50

ETHICS

The word ethics comes from the Greek ethos, which has a place-based aspect to its meaning. Ethics are formed in the world.

What do we mean by ethics in relation to treescapes? How do tree narratives affect our moral relationship to them?

Is failure always bad? How much failure can we become comfortable with in relation to treescapes and land use?

FORM

How does policy consider form and language as crucial to effectiveness? Why does linguistic justice matter – for trees and humans?

ut vanitati veritas et opinioni confirmatae natura ipsa cedat

…truth gives way to deception, and nature itself to established opinion.

Cicero Tusculan Disputations III.I.3

Credits

Katharine Earnshaw
University of Exeter
k.m.earnshaw@exeter.ac.uk

Letterpress printed by Princetown Press
wild colour accents from the heart of Dartmoor National Park

UKRI Future of the UK Treescapes Programme – MEMBRA Project

2025

The Book, In Form

Bound as a concertina book, letterpress printed in dark brown ink, and with accents made from ink foraged from trees on Dartmoor. The book is 18 internal pages and attached to a wrap-around cover, which is decorated in ink made from Dartmoor oak galls.

Process for making the books

There are three distinct processes used in the making of the books: ink making, printing, and book making.

Ink Making

Four tree inks were made from plant material foraged on Dartmoor in the southwest of England. In all cases, the ink specimens were painted onto 120gsm paper from Frogmore Paper Mill. They have been chemically altered with iron (reacts with tannins to darken the colours) and citric acid (breaks the colour compound, leaving “white”).

• Willow – the first woody plant in the Dartmoor pollen record and so we use it to mark the beginning of the book. The ink was made from fallen branches, cooked in an alkali solution. Iron turns the reddish-brown to grey; citric acid lightens the ink.

• Oak – paired with the heading “time” as it can live for hundreds of years, sometimes even more than a thousand. The ink is made from simmering crushed oak galls in water. Galls are marble-like woody growths on the oak tree caused by wasps. The gall is harmless to remove once the wasp has vacated. Ochre ink to start, and turning black with the addition of iron. Citric acid lightens the ink. Bicarb of soda shifts blacks to oranges and dark pink.

• Hawthorn – paired with the heading “ethics” as there are many rules in lore about hawthorn and its use. Inks are made from the haws cooked in alkali, producing a russet orange ink. The higher the pH, the redder the colour. Iron turns the ink to black, citric acid lightens the ink.

• Ash – paired with the heading “form” due to its popularity with wood-turners. Inks are made from the seeds cooked in alkali. A very light brownish-green ink. Adding iron shifts the ink towards brown, losing the yellow undertones. Adding citric acid shifts the ink back to olive green.

Printing

The text was hand-set in the typeface Fournier. The founts were obtained from one of the few remaining type foundries in the UK that specialise in fine printing, Nomad Letterpress in Whittingdon.

In total seven distinct founts were used — each live in their own tray (80cm x 35cm). Body text was set in 14pt Roman and Italic variants. The roman numerals for the Latin quotes were set in Small Caps. The credits at the end were set in 12pt. The headings are set in 36pt and the title page and cover are set in 24pt.

The @ symbol for Dr Earnshaw’s email was pilfered from another fount. We own a total of 12 @ symbols across all of our metal type, and I am constantly putting them in a special place so I won’t forget where they are. The printing ornament on the back cover was cast in London by Paekakariki Press.

The brass rule, used alongside the plant specimens, was graciously supplied by EE Chrisp, a third-generation printer in Manchester.

Each of the letters were transposed from their respective trays into a composing stick, one letter at a time. Words are separated by non-printing spaces, and lines are filled with wider spaces, muttons and nuts, so that each line is the same length.

The interior pages were all printed on a single sheet of A2 paper on a single pass of our hand-powered cylinder proofing press. Made in London by Soldans in 1952, we believe it is the largest remaining hand-powered proofing press in the UK.

The letterpress ink, Dark Brown from British manufacturer Hawthorn Printmakers, is distributed via three rollers and rolled across the letters. An impression is taken by rolling the cylinder along the bed of the press, ink leading the way, paper gripped tightly to the cylinder as it passes across the text.

The recycled paper, made by Frogmill Paper Mill in the southeast of England, is 120gsm. It has been discontinued as of February 2025 as the mill, which operates the oldest still in operation Fourdrinier paper-making machine, has ceased the commercial part of its operation.

The cover is printed on a 1910 clamshell press, made in Halifax, England around 1910. This is our “fast” machine, and, when the conditions are right, it’s possible to print over 600 impressions an hour. The flywheel whirrs, as the foot-operated treadle keeps the machine in motion as our hands put a fresh sheet into position, move out of the way as the machine closes, and then pull the sheet out after an impression is taken.

The cover paper is 280gsm recycled Frogmore paper. Again, discontinued. For those lucky enough to receive a copy of the book, this is some of the last paper made of its kind.

Book Making

The books are bound in a concertina style. They are dynamic, and the pages want to turn themselves as soon as the book is opened.

To assemble the book, the printed sheet was cut into three strips, the ends were glued so it became one long strip. Then, it was folded back and forth in a zig-zag pattern until neatly assembled into a rectangular book block.

Opposite each of the headings, an insert of ink made from trees was added by putting two slits in the page and tucking the coloured sheet into position. The backs of the insert were folded over to hold it in position.

We expect the colours from the tree inks to shift over time. Chemical reactions, or perhaps a very slow version of performance art, continue long after the ink was extracted from its tree. We love the interplay of the synthetic letterpress inks, a permanent mark made by a dying technology, contrasted with botanical colours made from processes as old as cloth, and yet resulting in impermanent colour.

The front and back pages were glued into position in their cover. When opened, the width of the spine forces the pages into a wider position, causing them to dance and jump, each page wanting to turn to the next, as if of its own accord.

About

Katharine Earnshaw specialises in environmental ethics, language (including linguistic justice), creative methodologies, and how we learn about the world with and through texts. She is particularly interested in agricultural ethics and instruction, didactic form (such as policy), and equity and justice. She is also a Co-I within the Land Use for Net Zero (LUNZ) Hub, which is co-funded by UKRI, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (on behalf of England and Wales), the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Scottish Government. Recent grants have included: as a Co-I on a large NERC grant looking at memory in trees and climate change as part of the ‘Future of UK Treescapes’ programme, and as PI on two NERC-led UKRI grants looking at present and future landscape decisions and agricultural ethics within the ‘Landscape Decision: towards a new framework for using land assets’ programme. She is particularly interested in collaborative and interdisciplinary work, with both academic and non-academic partners.

On the Planting Questions project, Dr Earnshaw received project management support from Anne-Caroline Hebrard.

Princetown Press is a letterpress studio in the heart of Dartmoor National Park, run by partners Emma Hogbin and Jon Palmer. Together, they have more than 30 years experience in craft and fine art. With combined degrees in Environmental Science (University of Toronto) and Product and Furniture Design (Kingston University), Jon and Emma bring a unique perspective to the heritage craft of letterpress.

UKRI The future of UK treescapes programme seeks to significantly improve the environmental, socio-economic and cultural understanding of the functions and services provided by UK treescapes, in order to inform decision making on the expansion of future treescapes for the benefits of the environment and society.