About Us

 

 

Float Press is located in the middle of the Brede Valley, near Rye, East Sussex. The beauty of the local landscape inspired Gary McKay and Rebecca Coates to establish Float Press in 2012. They want to highlight the quiet Wealden countryside that surrounds them, as it is blessed with glorious gardens, abundant hedgerows, statuesque woodlands, structural fields, and the soft vernacular architecture.

Rebecca Coates grew up in Kent and East Sussex. She studied at Chelsea School of Art and Middlesex University in London, graduating with a degree in Three Dimensional Design. Her early career was focused on product design and sculpture.

Gary McKay grew up in the USA.  He has a PhD in Geospatial Engineering and Archaeology from Edinburgh University and is now a Research Fellow with the University of Dundee.  He is a former US Naval Research Laboratory /NASA scientist , and has done documentary  work for the BBC and Channel  4, amongst others.

This small, family business is based around an eighteenth century barn, which in 2014 was converted into a glorious studio, with windows looking out over the valley. The ever changing seasons provide them with a continuous source of material to work with, and Rebecca is always evolving the designs and product range to reflect this. Float Press initially concentrated on producing high quality greeting cards and limited edition giclee prints using their unique graphic approach to design. The rich tonal and textural qualities of the original art work is now being accurately reproduced not only onto heavyweight print paper, but also wood, linen, silk, plastics and metals. Some of the results can be seen on the subsequent web pages, and but as ever, Rebecca and Gary being keen innovators, there is more to come. They hope you enjoy looking at the website and are always happy for any feedback.