While still at the RA, Palmer began teaching part-time at Winchester School of Art, where he became a full-time tutor in 1962, and in 1966, the head of the Foundation Department.
Similarly the short-lived Imprint Society in Barre, Massachusetts, commissioned Palmer to illustrate H. M. Tomlinson's The Sea and The Jungle in 1971 and Benito Cereno, by Melville, in 1972.
The Old Stile Press, in Llandogo, persuaded Palmer to return to his boxwood blocks[citation needed] to illustrate The Ballad of Reading Gaol, by Oscar Wilde, in 1994 (225 copies).
In February of the same year, Palmer took part in a major examination of art created for Coleridge's Poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
An exhibition at Garden Gallery, Pallant House, Chichester, West Sussex, to mark the forthcoming publication of "LAND", by the Old Stile Press, Llandogo, December 1995 (240 copies), featured landscape wood engraving in Palmer's "instantly recognizable style"[2] and text by Eric Williams and soon sold out.
In November 2012, the Society of Wood Engravers awarded its 75th Anniversary Prize to Palmer for his chef d'oeuvre, "Circular Forms", which exists in several editions.
In February–March 2006, Palmer's show of church interiors, "Places of Worship", was held at Portsmouth Cathedral; in October–November 2006 "At Any Time" was shown at the Winchester Gallery.