Photograph of Warehouse at T. & A. Constable Printers

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

52358

Title

Photograph of the warehouse at T. & A. Constable printers, Hopetoun Street, September 1930

Description

One black and white photograph of the warehouse at T & A Constable printers, Hopetoun Street, September 1930. The photographs shows the length of the warehouse with work benches, tools and stacks of paper either side of the marked out corridor. Employees can be seen both standing and sitting at their desks and a cluster of people are stood near a smaller room with windows at the far end of the corridor. Photograph mounted on grey card with a pencil border around the photograph, and a sticker at the bottom with type caption.

Accession number

SH.2021.079

In the early 20th century, Edinburgh had dozens of printing and publishing companies and many of their buildings still survive. This picture was taken in 1929, soon after the new workshop for T. & A. Constable was opened on Hopetoun Street. T. & A. Constable was founded in the 1790s and by 1839, the firm was appointed Her Majesty's Printer and Publisher in Scotland. By the 1860s, Constable was one of the biggest printing companies in the city and the official printer for the University of Edinburgh.

The huge caseroom is where metal printing blocks of individual letters, or type, were assembled to make a page of a book for printing. You can see the drawers filled with type, and the metal frames, or chases, for holding the assembled type.

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Photograph of warehouse at T. & A. Constable printers