Collectanea. Third series / edited by Montagu Burrows.

Date:: 1896

Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Collectanea. Third series / edited by Montagu Burrows. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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press, arrested my attention. This- was so until my own boyhood. My eldest brother was employed at a large paper-hanging manufactory beside Rosemary Branch Bridge, Hoxlon. Before I went to Woodfall’s I often went to the factory, and fed the trough with ink—quite a boy’s task, as you may suppose. A large block of some hard wood had cut in relief the design, of course for one colour only. This had two leather straps at top, by which the operative held the block and dipped it into the trough of colour, and thence on to the paper to be printed. The paper with this impression was drawn along a short distance over the table of the hand-press after printing, and the man repeated the operation until his ‘piece’ (12 yards) was completed. Of course he had to go through this process for each colour that was to be displayed on the paper. This was at a good-sized factory (some 100 hands I should think), and no other method was there practised. The time I speak of was in the forties. How soon after, machinery changed all this I do not know; but I do not remember hearing of such change for some time after that. H. H. June 21, 1897.