Colour in Print

Intricacies of the printing process employed at the Alabaster Passmore press in Torvil, on the outskirts of Maidstone.

This all-work-and-no-play industrial documentary is a thorough examination of the three colour letterpress printing process employed at the Alabaster Passmore press in Torvil, on the outskirts of Maidstone. Likely made for schools or internal staff training, it offers an encyclopaedic description of printing methods and machinery, from composition and foundry, to folding, binding and distribution.

The film was directed by the company's own man, Brian Passmore, whose father Alfred Ernest shot some of the world's earliest surviving home movies - of his family at home in Streatham, South London around 1902.