About

A cairn is a pile of stones on a summit. Every walker who passes adds one. Nobody builds it, and it gets built anyway.

Cairn Press makes contour prints of British hills. Each one is drawn from Ordnance Survey elevation data — the real shape of the real ground, not an illustrator's idea of a mountain. The contours are set at a single hairline weight, the summit is marked with a trig point and its spot height, and there is nothing else on the paper.

That restraint is deliberate. Ordnance Survey maps use heavy lines every fifth contour so you can count elevation while standing on a hillside in the rain. It is a brilliant piece of design and it belongs in a rucksack, not on a wall. We took it out. What is left reads as a shape from across the room and as a map when you walk up to it.

What you get

Prints in three sizes on 200 gsm matte fine art paper — heavy enough to sit flat, and matte so the room's light never throws a highlight across the contours. Framed options come in oak, black or white, glazed and ready to hang.

Everything is printed and posted in Britain, usually within two to four days. Nothing crosses a border, so nothing gets held at customs and nobody gets a surprise charge at the door.

The hills

We started with 47: the ones people actually stand on. Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, Yr Wyddfa, Helvellyn, Tryfan. Alongside them the ones that reward the walk in — Suilven rising alone out of the Assynt moor, An Teallach, Liathach, Ladhar Bheinn in country you cannot drive to.

More are coming. There are 282 Munros and 214 Wainwrights, and we intend to draw all of them.

One hill in particular

In 1774 the Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne, chose Schiehallion in Perthshire to weigh the Earth. Its isolation and near-symmetrical ridge made the gravitational pull of the mountain measurable against a plumb line.

To do the arithmetic, the surveyor Charles Hutton had to work out the mountain's volume — so he took the survey heights and joined the points of equal elevation with lines.

Contour lines were invented on a Scottish hill, in order to weigh the world. Everything we make comes from that afternoon.