1 PRINT IN THANET - COVER & BACK COVER & TEXT - FLIPBOOK v26 ZZZ - FAW - Flipbook - Page 41
Martell had co-founded publishers The Graham Cumming
Group which owned the Westwood Press. This press printed
and sold maps and diaries, selling advertising space to cover
costs and to generate additional profit.
It was not surprising that when the boys, Charles and
Henry Martell, found a printing press at their school, St
Lawrence College in Ramsgate, they started to print for
themselves. Later unwrapping their Christmas presents in
1962, they found that their father had bought them an Adana
printing machine of their own. [39.] This small press could
print an area up to about 20cm by 12cm and was suitable for
printing calling cards, letterheads and other social stationery.
The boys started printing from home and were so successful
that they were paying tax by the age of 16. [46.] Over the next
forty years their business was to grow until it employed around
30 people.
The first step towards this growth was in 1967, when
the brothers moved from working at home to their first print
works, in Fitzroy Avenue, Margate. Two years later in 1969 they
took over a stationery shop on Northdown Road, Margate.
After a fire this shop was rennovated to more than
double its original size. The printworks also expanded to a new
site at Hopes Lane, Ramsgate.
The business not only changed premises
but
also its printing processes several times.
‘YOUR VOICE’
In
the late 1960s Martell moved from the
Stationery has become a
setting of individual letters of letterpress
fashionable collectable rather than
to creating plates of text and images
a functional business necessity. Do
known as lithography. Later in the
you have a favourite form of print
that you prefer to have in paper
1990s the brothers made a further
form, what does it use (colour,
type of paper and letter
forms) to tell your
story?
