Stafford & Co Ltd, Netherfield & London Printers


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The programme was from Newstead Abbey and there were several other Nottingham-connected items.

That reminds me. Must check the recording of that to see if Nottstalgia's very own LizzieM managed to get on camera after all.

:)

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Almost certain now that we will be having an exhibition of my father's posters that he created at Stafford's in the 1930's at the Bonington Gallery at Nottingham Trent University in the next 6 months

Hi Connoisseur and All My father was a lithographic artist at Stafford's in the 1930's. He started as an apprentice there in 1923 aged 14, and was immediately sent to the Nottingham Municipal School

Great news! At last there is to be an exhibition in Nottingham of my Dad's posters next spring. It will be at the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, at the Shakespeare St. campus. You mig

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yes your right dave i have always got curson and dunston st mixed up in my head good job i used to know what st to go down to my varius friends houses

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Hi Connoisseur and All

My father was a lithographic artist at Stafford's in the 1930's. He started as an apprentice there in 1923 aged 14, and was immediately sent to the Nottingham Municipal School of Art which later became Nottingham College of Art.

He was the 'Big Head' man. He drew the portraits of the stars or advertising characters for film and advertising billboards, others would do the lettering. He kept samples of his work. I have around 40 posters drawn by him. He left the company during the war and unfortunately never went back. The posters which date from 1937 to 1941 are large 1 metre x 1.5 metre and have been tucked away for nearly 80 years in a black plastic bag. I have now unearthed them, managed to identify them and and with the help of Portsmouth University where I now live, have been able to scan them so there is a permanent record. I have only recently discovered the full history of my father ( he has been dead for many years ) and of the posters and am still discovering new things.

It is highly likely your poster was drawn by my father and I would love to have more details of it. Because of the Nottingham story and a romantic family story that goes with it, BBC Nottingham are considering doing an item on it, with an exhibition at Nottingham Trent University ( which now houses the Nottingham College of Art ) as he is of course an old alumni.

Hope you see this and reply

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Hi All,

An afterthought.

My father lived of course in Nottingham but my sister, 9 years older than me and born in 1933, remembers the family moving to London with Stafford's

when she was very young. The posters date from 1937 to 1941 and are marked Stafford's of Nottingham and London so it seems likely he was asked to to move specifically to do these commissions. Did Stafford's expand at this time? It was probably meant to be a permanent move but then the war came along.

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Hi Connoisseur and All

It is highly likely your poster was drawn by my father and I would love to have more details of it. Because of the Nottingham story and a romantic family story that goes with it, BBC Nottingham are considering doing an item on it, with an exhibition at Nottingham Trent University ( which now houses the Nottingham College of Art ) as he is of course an old alumni.

Hope you see this and reply

Welcome to Nottstalgia goff. I hope you get a reply to your message, and I'm sure we'd like to know more about your father's work and background. However, bear in mind that connoisseuruk69 has not logged in since February 2013 so may not see your current post.

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I read the comments about Stafford & Co with great interest as I was an apprentice colour retoucher there in the Artists Department in the 1960's. Staffords were one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Cinema poster printers in the country. They were also one of the last printers to use Chromolithography where the printing plates were drawn by hand on zinc or aluminium plates and printed on Direct printing machines as a production method. They also printed Railway timetable posters for station platforms and Shunting Books for the goods yards. They printed all the posters for the James Bond and The Beatles films. They also printed the advertising hoardings for Bass and Worthington beer. When Wild Bill Hickock brought his Wild West Show from America to perform in England, Staffords produced the stock posters for him, the times, dates and venues were overprinted later. I can remember that in the MD's office there was a photograph of him and the MD of the time on the wall. The production space was in the part that fronted onto Forester St., the multi storey buiding at Curzon St. was used as a paper warehouse and for storage.

If anyone has any queries abut the company or the people who worked there I would be happy to help

regards

Roger Dannheimer

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Hi Roger. pleased to see your post. Continuing to find out more about my father and the posters . Have now 50 scanned. That is pretty well all of them. They are all different and include Oxo adverts, films with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Richard Greene, Spencer Tracey, Loretta Young and many others. I managed to obtain a copy of Peter Barrie Waite's book on the History of Stafford and Co. from a Nottingham library through my local library in Portsmouth. There was a telephone no. in the front and I spoke to the author!

He told me much of what you report and was keen to get as much information from me as I was from him. I aim to keep in touch and work together to find out more. I am sure he would love to speak to you too. If you get a copy of the book from a Nottingham library you would find his number. I am sure he would like to hear from you.

The book is more about the early days of the company and then later after the second world war as you remember. There is little about the period my father was there and nothing that resembles his work. It seems to have fallen through the net. There is one direct connection, a member of one of the founding families Claude Beagle Stevenson mentioned in the book signed my father's apprenticeship papers. I have teamed up with a young artist friend who is also a whizz on computers. The scanned files are of such high quality that we can print them up to full size with the same quality as the originals. She can all repair any damage on the files. We have arranged an exhibition at an gallery in Portsmouth in November where we will put them on display together with my father's story. We will also hope to sell prints and even greeting cards made from the posters. I would love my father's work to be in households up and down the country. I could post pictures of some of the posters on this web site if someone could explain how to do it. I am not too computer literate.

Goff

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Hi All,

The exhibition of my father's posters (see my previous post ) went very well. We had lots of visitors and much interest from local radio and TV. The BBC One Show came down to film us and there will be a piece going out on national TV in the next two months. I will let you know as soon as i hear the date it is to be shown. In the meantime if anyone has any information about Stafford and Co. I would love to hear it.

Goff

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Hi All,

The item on the One Show concentrated on the 'human interest' aspect of my discovery of the posters and my father's story. I would have liked them to show more about the posters and the printers and the printing process. For a more balanced piece, google That's Solent TV, look under videos on their Youtube page and scroll down. You can also find it if you google Goff Gleadle. I have learned more and am still learning. Stafford's was possibly the largest poster printer in England at the time and was responsible for 50% of cinema posters printed in England between the 1920's and 60's. I have been in touch with the British Film Institute and the Professor of British Cinema History at Leicester University. The posters are almost certainly unique as a collection for several reasons. There was a critical shortage of paper in WW2 and along with other paper old posters were pulped for reuse. The few that survived are finished full colour posters. I have both monochrome and full colour. The monochromes show the first stage of the printing process ( colour was added in stages later ) and the artwork is more clearly revealed. Lastly most printing companies had stopped employing staff artists and started using advertising agencies, my father might have been one of the last staff artists. Such artists were deliberately kept anonymous, so it is unheard of to find a collection from one print company that can be attributed to one known artist. We will be having further exhibitions at the Art Space Portsmouth June 6th to 11th and October 16th to 29th. I would love to hold an exhibition in Nottingham, if anyone has any contacts please let me know.

Goff

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My brother say that in his younger days (born in 1930s) he and his mates climbed over the fence into Staffords and dug about in the rubbish for some "marbles".  I think they must have been used somewhere in the printing process.  They were not very well thought of though and lots of games would be started with the words "no Staffords".

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Hi Tabby, that's another little titbit to add to my father's story. The marbles were used to clean the stone or metal plates the posters were printed on after a run of prints. They were put on a tilting bed and the marbles run back and forward. No doubt the marbles suffered. Apparently deafness was commonplace for those that worked in that room! I continue to find out little bits here and there. I knew my father was sent to London for a time to do adverts for Oxo. I have 4 of them. Now I have found from Premier Foods who now own Oxo that there were probably at least 20. They have no posters but a colouring book which has 20 images including the 4 I have. 

 

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Hi All, for anyone interested we are holding an exhibition of my father's posters at The Spring Arts and Heritage Centre, Havant near Portsmouth. I know that's a long way from Nottingham but the exhibition is on every day ( except Sundays ) from now until December 23rd, if you happen to be going that way.  You can see details on their website under exhibitions. I will also be giving a talk to the Burton Joyce U3A group next June 12th. That's a bit nearer Nottingham! I am still hoping to hold an exhibition in Nottingham eventually.

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Almost certain now that we will be having an exhibition of my father's posters that he created at Stafford's in the 1930's at the Bonington Gallery at Nottingham Trent University in the next 6 months or so. It is very much a Nottingham story so I am really pleased that this is likely to go ahead.

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Great news! At last there is to be an exhibition in Nottingham of my Dad's posters next spring. It will be at the Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, at the Shakespeare St. campus. You might remember that before he started as an apprentice artist at Stafford's, he went to the Nottingham Municipal School of Art for a year or two. That became the Nottingham College of Art and is now part of Nottingham Trent. The exhibition will start on the 3rd or 4th April 2019 and run until 4th May. There will be some of the original posters on display and prints of many of the others. There will also be a display telling the story of my father and that of Stafford's and the printing process, with photos and images of earlier Stafford's posters. We will also tell how they were lost and found and how we restored them digitally. There will be a preview and perhaps a meet and greet where I will be on hand to tell the story and answer questions.

Do come along.

Lawrence Gleadle is coming home!!

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London based printing company Lonsdale & Bartholomew acquired Stafford & Co printers circa 1961/2 as far as I know they were one of three main independent printers mainly for the distribution of landscape cinema quad posters the others were Feref Associates and W.E Berry of Bradford.They also did Railway posters and lithograph lobby cards amongst other things I think the London site closed possibly late 60s when all production moved to Nottingham (Highly collectible posters feature both city’s on L&Bs early prints).

i as a cinema poster collector have loads of L&B prints but none of Stafford & Co I think L&B ceased trading around 1988 as up to 1986/early 87 was the last time their logos were printed at the bottom R/H corner so I’m guessing around this time the company folded.

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