1 PRINT IN THANET - COVER & BACK COVER & TEXT - FLIPBOOK v26 ZZZ - FAW - Flipbook - Page 39
The Martell Press
and its print
THIS story will resonate with anyone that has been a member of a family
business, especially in the print industry. These businesses usually
start small and grow incrementally as they serve and employ from their
local community. Skills and business acumen is passed down through
the generations and these small businesses become an important and
embedded local asset. Key to their success over the years is being
responsive to and anticipating the needs of their small business customers,
on whose livelihoods they depend.
The Martell Press was started by two Thanet schoolboys. The brothers
caught the addictive whiff of printer’s ink, oil, and paper, typical of any predigital printworks, through the work of their printer father Henry Martell.
↑ 39.
“What’s this?” asked an advert in
the back pages of magazines in the
1950s. “It's a fruitful source of extra
cash!” The machine pictured was
a neat, streamlined, red-bodied
Adana printing machine, which
used standard printer’s type and
images on blocks to enable the first
desktop publishing. Once you’d
bought a machine, which came with
a guide (“Printing Made Easy arrestingly written in non-technical
style.”) [137.], and purchased some
stock cards to print on, you could
run your own business from home
printing business cards, headed
notepaper, tickets and labels.
