1 PRINT IN THANET - COVER & BACK COVER & TEXT - FLIPBOOK v26 ZZZ - FAW - Flipbook - Page 9
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his publication, Print in Thanet, marks the end of a National Lottery
Heritage Fund (NLHF) supported project, Print Works, devised by
the three artists that comprise Appletye, an arts and heritage organisation.
The Print Works project began as a physical, local, inter-generational
exploration, interpretation and exhibition of a collated, important and
still growing print archive. At the heart of this archive are a wide range of
artefacts and materials mostly related to two very different Thanet based
printing businesses, The Thanet Press and The Martell Press, collected and
donated over a number of years. This publication presents some of this
archive and its many lost voices and includes whispers from other Thanet
printers such as Magic Ink and Lanes Printers. Print in Thanet helps to bring
alive the important and largely uncelebrated past print industry of Thanet,
in East Kent. The purpose of the project and Print in Thanet is to remind,
recognise and celebrate the craft, skills and social value of print in the past,
and their relevance today across the generations.
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← 4.
Morié pattern
seen through a
linen tester [TTP]
See page 99
Preface
The original project was to have included recruiting and training a
young volunteer workforce to take part in an ambitious programme of
cataloguing, the digitisation of some 2,000 objects and ephemera in the
archive and the collection of oral histories from workers from Thanet’s print
industry. A three-month long exhibition, hosted by Special Collections and
Archives, the University of Kent, Canterbury, was ready for installation, and
would have welcomed a variety of different audiences. This interpretation of
a selection of artefacts from the archive and thirteen large hanging banners
of text and images was to have included inter-generational workshops and
a launch performance by young dancers in response to the sounds and
movement of print working. Bringing the archive to the public, in the way
Appletye had planned, relied on the physical proximity of actual objects
from the archive, specific access to buildings and people working and
socialising together in shared spaces. These important and social aspects
of the project were brought to a sudden and extended halt, because
of the necessary restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the lifeendangering COVID-19.
Echoing the resourcefulness of the original print workers of the archive,
Appletye reworked the exhibition banners and booklet and turned them
into another form of interpretation of the archive, this publication. It cannot
bring you the smells and sounds associated with the archive. You will not be
able to touch objects nor get messy trying out the print process in one of
