All prints are handmade by Peter Ralston on archival rag paper with an archival ink set.

Small Matted Prints - This collection is printed on 8.5 x 11 inch sheets, matted, ready to be framed.

Sightings - This limited edition (LE) collection of 64 images is from Peter's 1997 book, Sightings. This edition is limited to 25 prints of each image plus five artist proofs (AP). They are printed on 17 x 22 inch sheets.

The Master Prints - This limited edition (LE) print is limited to 50 prints of this image plus ten artist proofs (AP). They are printed on 24 x 36 inch sheets.

Custom sizes of this image are available by special request. 

The story behind Tumblehome

It was the first time I had walked that end of the island and I was deeply moved by the old fishing camps up there. No cellar holes, just decaying remnants of what was once a thriving little seasonal community. 

The place reeked of the past and I wandered in a reverie, surrounded by the evidence of so many lives lived and, now, gone.

I beheld this particular juxtaposition of buildings and that was that.

This image has been well-received in the years since, but no reaction to it will ever please me as much as the time, a few years later, when I took the brand-new Island Journal (annual publication of the Island Institute) over to share with my friend, Amy.

In that hot-off-the-press issue was a story written about an island ancestor of hers who, in the course of his long and full life, had managed to blow off one of his legs while out duck-hunting. It was a great story and was very much enhanced by an old photograph loaned to me by Amy, depicting her ancestor, Cyrus, sitting stiffly post-accident for the long-ago photographer under two guns hanging on the wall, one of which was the culprit shotgun.

I handed Amy the new Journal and we went straight to the story about Cyrus. It was an immediate hit with her but then, flipping through the rest of the pages, Amy came upon this photograph and without a nano-second’s pause blurted, “Gawd, didn’t Dynamite (her husband) and I have Some Fun in that place!”

Upon which she instantly turned beet-red.

We both laughed long and hard, for she knew that I knew a bit about their courtship, back when young Dynamite was fishing off the island and young Amy used to visit. 

And we reveled, each in our own way, in the innocent, delicious way in which Amy’s memory had taken us out to the island, back to a time of young love, love that in their case had so clearly flourished in the many decades since.