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Francis
Cupiss
found that he needed to wrap and pack his products, as well as
advertise them, so he decided to incorporate a printing section
into the business in 1830. A Columbian Eagle printing press was
purchased as well as several founts of wooden poster type with
which he produced his own printing requirements including posters
and showcards etc. Gradually accepting other printing work from
friends, Church Magazines, Letterheads, Cards, Invitations of
Individual Style for Weddings, Posters, Auctioneers Catalogues
- the full range of "Jobbing Work".
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In
1880 the firm took on its largest ever printing job the first
volume of the Suffolk Horse and Stud Book
of
some 721 pages together with pencil drawings of examples of the
Suffolk Stock. The text was set by hand under gaslight, and printed
on a double crown size gas powered printing press. The company continued
to produce this book until the 1950's when due to the mechanisation
of farming equipment the decline in numbers of the Suffolk "Punch"
Horse made production of such a traditionally printed book uneconomic. |
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With
the mechanisation of the industrial age the sales of horse medicines
slowed and the printing sales increased with larger and more mechanical
printing presses being purchased and the number of type founts increased.
The Eagle Press is still used today for "one off' posters and for
large linocut's by art students to get the printing pressure only
the Eagle Press can provide.
The Wharfedale flat bed cylinder (capable of printing eight pages
at a time) is still retained by the firm in working
condition but the early "Arab" Treadle Platen was replaced by
a Vicobold Auto Platen which was in turn replaced by two Heidleberg
letterpress platens which are in full use today
producing letterpress personal stationery on various stocks of paper
including specialist paper brought in by customers, and cutting
and creasing work. In recent times all the old presses replaced
have been given to industrial museums where they are reassembled
in working condition.
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With
the members of staff being able to mix the modern methods of Computer
Based printing skills with the traditional skills of hand typesetting
and letterpress printing with experiences that have been passed
down through the company since 1830, giving the possibility of
using original machinery and materials from that era to produce
finished work. Brought up on the values of traditional printing
and business values that have stood the test of time this gives
the company the unique position of being able to specialise in
short run work produced by modern or traditional methods, neatly
executed in the shortest possible time.
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The
company still prints its own stationery for The Cupiss' Horse
Care Range and takes in a wide variety of jobs from Wedding to
special Birthday invitations, personal stationery to business
stationery, draw tickets books to invoice books, leaflets to posters,
digital colour copying to black and white copying, foiled business
cards to embossed letterheads, stapling to wire and plastic binding,
and recently printed a limited run of a 12 page Booklet of Poetry
Hand Set and printed letterpress on hand made paper.
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