About

Tatami Press started in 2024 in the front room of an old tatami workshop. The floor still smells faintly of rush grass, which is where the name comes from.

We print on a secondhand risograph, a stencil duplicator from the 1990s that lays down one ink per pass. That makes every colour a separate layer: where two inks cross they mix into a third, and no two sheets register quite the same. We like it that way.

Our subjects are close to home: the last train over the river, the neighbour's persimmons, a vending machine glowing on an empty street. Each design is drawn for two or three inks, printed in a single edition and signed.

How we print

• Inks: soy-based riso inks, mostly blue, yellow, fluorescent pink and teal.
• Paper: uncoated 180 g, cut by hand.
• Editions of 40 to 50. Slight misregistration and speckle are part of the process, not flaws.

What we don't do

We don't take commissions or print jobs, and we don't sell online; every print goes from our table at a market, or in the twice-yearly postal release. The studio isn't open to visitors, but we're happy to talk about printing at any market.