And in those days you didn’t just get A1, A2, A3 and A4. Paper came in different sizes as well as different weights. So you would have ‘Large Post 22’ or ‘Double Elephant’ or ‘Double Demy’ or ‘Quad Crown, Foolscap’, and so on…

What we would do is we would take a sample – about a dozen samples – fold them down to about A4 size, put a little label on them, and put them into drawers, so that if a printer rang up asking, “Could you send me sample of Conqueror Asia Laid Double Demy 16”, we could pull it out and send it to them.

One of the training exercises was that you’d send the other guys out of the room and then we’d tear off a sample about the size of a business card and they had to guess exactly what it was. I tell you, nine times out of 10, we got it right. I wouldn’t be able to do it now, but I tell you nine times out of 10 we knew exactly what the paper was and what the weight was. So that was a grounding in paper for later on in life when customers were specifying, “What do you want?” and I could suggest 250. Now everything is in grams, but back then it was Large Post 22 or Large Post 26 or whatever it was.

It’s certainly made life a lot easier nowadays than back then.

Colin Chappell

Print’s Past excerpts are drawn from interviews held by Benjamin Thorn, curator of the Armidale Museum of  Printing.

Editor’s note: Last month’s Print’s Past was incorrectly attributed to Steven Jeffries. It should have been attributed to Paul McMahon

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