James Cook is a British artist who has been creating artwork using vintage typewriters since 2014. What began as a school art project has developed into a distinctive artistic practice that has taken his work and his typewriters around the world.
James was initially inspired by the story of Paul Smith, an American artist born with cerebral palsy, who was give n a typewriter at an early age. Unable to express himself easily through traditional artistic tools, Smith discovered that the mechanical precision of the typewriter allowed him to create extraordinarily detailed pictures. His story introduced James to the long-forgotten history of typewriter art, a practice stretching back as far as the Victorian era.
Over the past 12 years, James has produced more than 350 typewriter artworks. Each picture is created entirely from letters, numbers and punctuation marks, leading James to describe his work as "a picture worth a thousand words."
His typewriters have travelled with him around the world, from Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Taiwan to New York, where he created artwork from the top of Rockefeller Center. Closer to home, James has worked at some of Britain's best-known landmarks, including the Royal Albert Hall, Battersea Power Station and The Ritz. In the summer of 2026, he was invited to Wimbledon to type on Centre Court ahead of the men's final.
Today, more than one million people follow James's work on Instagram, watching as these mechanical machines, originally designed for writing, are transformed into tools for drawing.
His latest project, Authors in Type, brings together 50 typewritten portraits created over three years and will be released on 27 October 2026. The book can be ordered online through James's website.
