We are a family business that began over 40 years ago in other forms. I am the founder, Phillip, and I used to work for the Ministry of Defense. One day I was given the task of testing materials for use in artificial limbs for servicemen. The worksheet had arrived at the lab four years before, labelled "URGENT" in big red letters. I needed a fairly cheap piece of equipment to do the job, but my request for it was turned down. On protesting, I was told I would learn that in the Ministry of Defense and the Civil Service in general, "the longer you leave things, the less urgent they become." After a brief discussion in which my choice of words may not have been the best (what’s wrong with calling your boss an idiot?) I was told that my career in the MOD was unlikely to progress.
Shortly after the "incident," my father-in-law happened to mention that waste newspaper is now £20 a ton, which was quite a lot in 1973. Wait a minute, I thought, and dashed home to weigh the week's newspaper; it weighed 16 lbs.—that's 140 houses per tonne per week—collect once a month—that's about 35 pickups.I mentioned monthly collections and exchanging Co-op trading stamps for paper all over.We collected 11 tonnes off doorsteps on our best day ever, and while collecting, people also left out a lot of books, maps, and other items, many of which I kept.What could go wrong?
Well, quite a bit. In 1976, the price of used paper crashed due to oversupply, and I could no longer sell the paper. With no money coming in, another plan was needed. One Saturday, the dog found a way to open the fridge—he'd been trying for weeks—and ate the Sunday lunch. I'll take some of those old books to that used bookstore, I reasoned.I received £5 for one of them. Riches restored! I went back to the bookshop the following week and noticed the shop owner had just torn out 100 illustrations from one of the books I had sold and was selling them for £1 each.
That's something I can do, I reasoned.Frenzied activity followed—destroying all the books for the illustrations and selling them on Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning. That source of prints dried up, so I had to find other images to sell, and I found some birthday cards with nice little views of London, but the image had a crease down the middle. I contacted the company that published them and found that they did indeed sell them as prints without the crease, but they would not supply me as, in their view, I was not a proper company. They would sell me the cards though, so I bought them, scuttled back home, and spent a day ironing all the creases out of them. They sold quickly, and when I returned and told them what I'd done, they said that if you're that determined, we'll supply the prints.
They sold well, and on my way back from the Lane on a Sunday afternoon, I noticed how there was always a big queue of tourists outside Madame Tussaud’s. I thought if I could sell to them, that would be a great market. However, trying to get Madame Tussaud’s to take them was not easy. I knew if they took them, they would sell, so after several months of effort trying to get them to stock them, I gave them 100 small framed prints. They said, "Okay, we will give it a go then." That was Friday; I got a small order on Monday, and eventually they ordered 10,000 at a time. We started selling them to outlets all over town.
I needed somewhere to make them, so I opened a gallery or workshop and started bespoke framing for prints, illustrations, original maps, etc. In the beginning, the gallery was open 7 days a week, with my wife and friends doing the evening shift. Unfortunately, disaster struck again when China began supplying the London tourist trade, and so once again I had to rethink. We moved the gallery to smaller premises on a high street, but the high rent, high rates, and constant vandalism of the shop front meant we closed the gallery in 2006. I have always been passionate about maps, and folding ones in particular, and I started to deal in them. However, when I sold one, I always wished I’d kept it. They are very scarce, and finding new stock has always been a problem. From here came the idea to try to make reissues. I built a workshop in my garden, and it has taken us a long time to learn the processes needed to make our reissues as close to and as beautiful as the originals.
We are now a family business in rural Devon, on the outskirts of Exmoor.Our maps are sold to individuals and to shops large and small, including museums like the V&A. We have supplied the BBC, and they have even appeared in a Hollywood film!