Catalogue description ALABASTER PASSMORE AND SONS LTD., TOVIL, MAIDSTONE (PRINTERS)

The following collection highlights the company's work and features many examples of its work e.g. catalogues for the Liberty Fashion house, the texts and sessions for Charles Spurgeon and the 'Annuals of the East' series' (a glossy magazine supplied to passengers on P. and O. liners)'. Also included are minute books, documentation relating to shares, ledgers and cash books, house magazines, advertising and promotional material, features on the company in trade magazines, and photographs of staff and premises.

Further information can be obtained from Mr. Michael Passmore, Chairman of the Passmore Print Group Ltd.

For additional deposit (24.10.86) as yet uncatalogued see rough list on 1986 small accessions file (& attached to copy of U 2809 catalogue in the Centre for Kentish Studies

The following material is on display at Maidstone Museum:

'The Matchless Mystery' - two copies of a Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit sermon given 10 August 1879 (see Bx 4/1)

'The Hairdressers Weekly Journal' (see Bx 4/3) (1 volume) 1882

Libertys catalogue (see Bx 4) (1 vol.) 1927

'What D'ye Buy' game in a box

A Litho stone

A large mounted colour photograph of a Rotaman press (1 doc.)

Liberty catalogues: (1) Royal Arms

(2) Hydrangeas

(3) Crinolene dress (see Bx 4) (3 vols.)

London Zoo guides (2 docs.)

Letterpress plates of a chimpanzee (2 docs.)

Triang Toys catalogue 1939

Print No. MS26 by Donald Maxwell of The Medway at Maidstone (1 doc.)

Calender picture of four swans

A printers gauge made by W. Kelly

Alabaster Passmore and Sons Ltd., Maidstone, Printers

Deposited 20/1/86

• Printing workshops

Introduction (Information on the company history is taken from "Print is our Business" by Elizabeth Repath - published in 1983).

The origins of the company date back to 1844 when Joseph Passmore started his own printing company in London, after being apprenticed as a printer with his older brother John. The Passmore family were regular attenders at New Park Street chapel in Southwark and in 1853 Joseph befriended the Baptist minister and preacher Charles Spurgeon. The Passmore business soon began publishing Spurgeon's texts for seminars and other works, and Joseph sought help from friend James Alabaster to cope with the publication side of the rapidly growing concern. The firms success was firmly founded on the relationship with Spurgeon and even after the minister's death in 1892, approximately 20,000 books and sermons were sold a week in the late 1890's.

As Joseph Passmore's sons entered the business, its scope widened and it gained a reputation for producing high quality colour fashion. Catalogues (e.g. for Liberty), as the company gradually concentrated on printing rather than publishing. In 1906 land in Tovil was purchased for a new print works and in 1911 Alabaster Passmore became a limited private company. By 1918 James Alabaster relinquished his remaining financial interests in the firm but his name was retained in the company title.

After the first World War the company further enhanced its reputation for high quality and colour embossed printing. In 1931 the company signed its first contract with Kent County Council and continued printing for the K.C.C. until the 1960s. The post-second World War period saw the companies drapery and fashion magazine trade fall away, to be replaced by work for advertising and promotional agencies, and house journal printing. Store and mail order catalogues was another area of expansion.

Today approximately eighty per cent of the company's work is magazine printing (compared with twenty per cent in 1970). The annual turnover is about £8 million and in 1982 the company bought Ambassador Press. Alabaster Passmore and Amabassador Press are now subsidiaries of the Passmore Print Group Ltd.

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