Pauntley Prints

As is so often the case in life, Pauntley Prints came about almost entirely by accident!

Back in 2001 Catherine wrote her second vegetarian cookery book Vegetable Heaven. The plan was to self publish and in an effort to make the book stand out from the crowd, we decided we wanted it to be illustrated with beautiful paintings rather than the more obvious photographs.

After a long, frustrating search and finally seeing her work by chance in Artists and Illustrators magazine, Catherine commissioned Elda Abramson to produce the paintings. This was a happy collaboration, with much enthusiasm on both sides, and Catherine thought the paintings that resulted were much too good to stay hidden within the covers of a book, so the idea of making prints was born. We sold the prints from the book, and Elda sold the book to her painting students - great synchronicity.

We got recipe book reviews in art publications and Elda's Zen ink paintings were featured in food magazines. We had the book launch and an exhibition of Elda'a Vegetable Heaven paintings in Foyles bookshop in London.

There were several unexpected spin-offs, not least of which was the acquisition of fine art imaging and printing skills, carried forward into Pauntley Prints...