Telling Stories, Digitally

Lambton Quay, 1895

Wellington’s central city was a muddy, energetic hub for print producers. New print-

ing processes and technology gave local printers increasingly sophisticated tools to get the word out in outrageous typog-raphy, deluxe editions or commercial quantities. The print objects produced by ROBERT COUPLAND HARDING, LYON & BLAIR or BOCK & COUSINS epitomize the quality and range of our lo-cal print heritage.

Messrs Bock & Cousins, Lyon & Blair and R.C. Harding proudly present

Print History Project > 1880’s > Lyon & Blair

Lyon and Blair, Engravers, Steam b&w photographic printers, Lithographers and Stationery Supplies.

Lyon & Blair was an old and established company which began life as a bookselling and stationery shop on Lambton Quay in 1840. It was founded by William Lyon, one of the town’s original settlers, who was a newspaperman, politician, and founder of the Welling-ton Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute Library. Lyon’s son was joined in the family business by a Scottish compatriot, John Ruth-erford Blair, in 1874. Blair helped the fi rm diversify and soon Lyon & Blair was renowned throughout the colony for printing works by Tregear and Aubert, for their excellent colour lithography, for their pamphlets which featured social reform and political themes, and for periodical publications including The Monthly Review and the Journal of the Polynesian Society. In 1894, Blair sold the thriving business to Whitcombe & Tombs.

Business History

Printed Examples

Lyon and Blair, Engravers, Steam b&w photographic printers, Lithog-raphers and Stationery Supplies. Lambton Quay,

1895

Source copy consulted: Repro-duced from the Wellington City Ar-chives Collection, 00138:0:12270

Copyright

Stage 1Assessing functionality and usability of three available digital applications in relation to Print History Project requirements. This identified Neatline as the most appropri-ate tool for providing the collection’s new foundation.

STRENGTHS:

• Temporal and geospatial aspects visually integrated • Open-ended, interactive browsing• Resources aligned to encourage comparison • Continuous narrative encourages depth of interpretation

LIMITATIONS: • Effective migration requires very disparate - yet respectively specialised - skills• Some desired functionality and presentation features could not be included since

Neatline is still under development

This project could not have been completed without the time and effort of Dr. Sydney Shep, Jamie Norrish, Max Sullivan, Jonny Flutey, Grae Hunter, Andrew Rae and Wayne Graham. Thanks a million.

STRENGTHS:

• Simple, controlled narrative encourages ease of understanding• Hyperlinked structure provides simple, intuitive navigation• ‘Timeslice’ snapshots provide compelling, broad historical overview

LIMITATIONS:

• Static pages encourage minimal interactivity• Predominantly text-based• Minimal narrative options limit browsability

2000 20131890s

Stage 2 Constructing a trial Print History Project space in Neatline. This identified and ad-dressed a significant number of practical and critical issues. These findings have been provided back to the Neatline development team and will inform the full-scale migra-tion.

Wai-te-ata Press, 2013

The Print History Project digi-tal collection is no longer com-

patible with its existing platform. This project’s objective was to evalu-ate, update, add geospatial data, and re-present the collection in an inter-active, storytelling environment. We used new-generation, open-source digital collection building tools to en-sure the continued relevance of this

colourful collection.

In 2000, the WAI-TE-ATA PRESS, the J. C BEAGLEHOLE ROOM and the NZETC sought to capture Wellington’s colourful print history. The question was: how do

we tell this lively story in the digital domain? The result was the Print History Project: a site that features “the lives, businesses, and works of those many printers, publish-ers, booksellers and...book trade personnel who contributed to the print landscape of Wellington from 1840”.

In 2013, NEATLINE acts as a new interface and an interpretaive layer for the Print History Project. The question now becomes: what innovative stories can we tell using

this new-generation tool?

Researcher: Flora FelthamSchool of Information Management

Email: flora.feltham@gmail.com

Supervisor: Dr. Sydney ShepWai-te-Ata PressFaculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

LYON AND BLAIR, ENGRAVERS, STEAM B&W PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINTERS, LITHOGRAPHERS AND STATIO-NERY SUPPLIES. LAMBTON QUAY. 1895. REPRODUCED FROM WELLINGTON CITY ARCHIVES COLLECTION,

00138:0:12270

3

Black, F., & MacDonald, B. H. (1998). Geographic information systems: A new research method for book history. Book History, 1(1), 11 – 31.Knowles, A. (2008). Placing history: How maps, spatial data, and GIS are changing historical scholarship. Relands, Calif.: ESRI Press.Neatline. (n.d.) Retrieved December 3, 2012, from www.neatline.org.Print History Project. (n.d.). Retrieved November 15, 2012, from http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/projects/php/main.html.

92 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1901

DD

1890: Coupland Harding relocates to Wellington

1887: Fiftieth anniversary of the Catholic Church in New Zealand

1890: Coupland Harding moves from Boulcott Street

In 1894, Blair sold his thriving busi-ness to Whitcomb

and Tombs

Title: Lyon and Blair, Engravers, Steam b&w photographic printers, Lithographers and Stationery Supplies. Lamb-ton Qua

Date: 1895

Source: Reproduced from

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