Coracle Press records from 1953 to 2013 document the press's production of books, printed matter and exhibitions under the direction of Simon Cutts.

A unique English outgrowth of the 1960s European revolution in prints, books, and multiples, Coracle Press was founded in London by artist-poet Simon Cutts in 1975, incorporating the remains of Tarasque Press (1964-1972), a prior publishing enterprise of Cutts' (with Stuart Mills). In 1976 Cutts established Coracle Press Gallery in a building adjacent to the press, creating a physical expression of his interest in the relationship between the book and the exhibition. Influenced by concrete poetry, conceptual art, and their Futurist and Constructivist antecedents, Coracle dissolved distinctions between the art object and its presentation. Every aspect of a Coracle exhibition (announcement, installation, catalog, poster) was conceived as part of the art it presented and often involved the artist's collaboration, while a book of poetry was conceived as both an art object and an exhibition space for poems. Thematically, the press had a certain focus on landscape and nature, exhibiting and publishing Ian Hamilton Finlay and the Land Artists Richard Long and Andrew Goldsworthy. Richard Wilson, David Willets, Stephen Duncalf, Hamish Fulton, and Cutts himself were among the otherwise more frequently exhibited and published artists, though in the late 1980s the press's authors ranged to the more theoretical Joseph Kosuth.

123.4 Linear Feet (235 boxes, 10 flatfile folders, 1 roll)

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Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of unreformatted videotape, audio tapes and computer files.