UCC Library has acquired Coracle Press items since 2013. The collection is open and as of 2023 contains 55 items. Items are predominantly in English. Coracle Press publishes limited edition items frequently in the medium of artists' books. The collection encompasses books, artist's books, ephemera, prints and posters.
The collection prefix before the call number is: Coracle.
Coracle Press is a small publishing press located in Co Tipperary since 1996. From the 1970s to 1996 it was based in London culminating in its last bookshop project workfortheeyetodo. In the 90s there was an additional base in Norfolk, England. Coracle Press is directed by writer and artist Erica Van Horn and poet, artist and editor Simon Cutts.
Coracle is a small publishing press directed by writer and artist Erica Van Horn and poet, artist and editor Simon Cutts. The consistent intention has been to involve artists, editors, poets and writers in the creation of an eclectic synthesis of word, image and print that could flourish in book form through exploration of metaphor, allusion, paradox and irony. It was initially started from a small farm between the hills of South Tipperary, Ireland in 1996.
Mostly based in London from the nineteen seventies, as both a publisher, gallery, and a space for books, workfortheeyetodo became its last bookshop project there in the mid-nineteen nineties. In this later remote form, it continues as printer-publisher, editor of spaces, employing many of the devices and formats of hypothetical publishing inherent in the small press. Inevitably, much of the content of the publishing is of the nature of the book itself, in both critical and playful dimensions. At the same time there is always the residue of poetry, and a concern with the mechanisms of the book as a manifestation of the poem itself, together with other books by artists, writers, and others without category. The books themselves are not so concerned with craft tradition, limitedness of edition, handmade paper and elaboration of binding, as with the plain and simple casebound book, the sewn paperback, the extensions of ephemera, and their availability.
Simon Cutts is an eminent figure in the field of artist books. He is a poet, artist, designer and publisher, and has made books since the mid-1960s, firstly with Stuart Mills as Tarasque Press and then as Coracle.
Erica Van Horn (1954-) is an American writer, editor, printer, bookmaker, and publisher. Van Horn has a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has lived in Europe since the early eighties: France, Britain, and now rural Ireland. Van Horn works together with the poet and artist Simon Cutts on the projects of Coracle.
Special Collections also holds the Coracle Press Company Library. This is the reference library of items used by Coracle Press to inform the creation and publishing of the press' output.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale holds the Simon Cutts constructed archive.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale holds an archive of Erica Van Horn's books and papers.