Forrest & Son

FORREST & SON, Show-card and Advertising Tablet Manufacturers, General Shop Furnishers, &c., 355, Argyle Street, Glasgow.

    “Advertising is to business what steam is to machinery — the motive power”. If this was a truism when Macaulay wrote, it is doubly so now, when competition among manufacturers and merchants grows keener every day. We are all familiar with the proverb, “Competition is the life of trade”, but we are not all aware that, in addition to its effect in developing or extending a trade or business, it actually creates new industries. For example, let us take the shops of half a century ago, when no necessity existed for elaborate fittings, decorations, or expensive advertisements, and compare them with the shops of to-day, when a merchant who wishes to keep pace with his keenly competing opponents must fit up his establishment with all sorts of plate-glass facias, signs, tablets, mirrors, show cases, and an endless variety of articles that are all considered necessaries now, but were never dreamt of by the old school. In the same way we see brewers, distillers, makers of soap, mustard, &c., scattering broadcast expensive and artistic showcards in a manner that would have taken the breath from their grandfathers.

    One of the largest and most enterprising firms manufacturing goods of this description is the well-known house of Forrest & Son. Their principal establishment, in Argyle Street, which we visited, consists of a large and substantial block of stone buildings, situated between York Street and James Watt Street. On the first floor are the offices and showrooms. Here we found ourselves surrounded with specimens of all sorts of signs, sign letters, tablets, showcards, show cases, showstands, shop fittings, mirrors, &c. We noticed innumerable specimens of attractive glass tablets and showcards which they supply in very large quantities to most of the great advertising firms in this country. They bore inscriptions familiar to every eye — Keen’s Mustard, Wright’s Coal-tar Soap, Van Houten’s Cocoa, Collard and Collards’ Pianos, Dents’ Gloves, Rowntree’s Chocolate, Hignet’s Tobaccos, Dunville’s Irish Whisky, and many other well-known names, showing the wide extent of the firm’s connections, which is truly a world-wide one, as their work is sent to wherever their customers’ goods are sold, thus bringing their name before buyers in the most remote and out-of-the-way places imaginable.

    Apart from what might be termed the show-card department, which supplies the wholesale houses, who, in turn, distribute the showcards among their retail customers, there is the department for the supply of retailers, with all their special requirements, in the way of handsome and attractive glass signs or facias, advertising glass panels and tablets, gilded sign letters, glass letters, plate-glass mirrors for shops, saloons, ships, and private houses ; shop window tickets, shop window fittings, show stands, and other appliances for the attractive display of goods, handsome showcases for jewellers, drapers, tobacconists, &c., which show off the goods in the most conspicuous manner, at the same time protecting them from injury by dust or air and from the fingers of those who are — well — kleptomaniacally afflicted. We were astonished at the huge stock of picture frame mouldings stored here, the firm being most extensive importers of Continental and American mouldings.

    We were invited to go through the workrooms, a description of which will be of interest. We were first taken to the silvering room, where specially selected plates are silvered either as mirrors or mirror showcards. The silvering table is something like a huge billiard table, the top being covered over with thick slate, beneath which is a large steam chamber, which not only heats the slate to the necessary temperature, but furnishes the supply of distilled water for dissolving the silver. After a plate is chemically cleaned and prepared it is laid on the table and levelled, and the silver, in a state of perfect solution, is poured over it, when the heat coming through the glass causes it to deposit. It was difficult to believe that this solution contained silver, as to the eye it was as clear as crystal. After the silvering is complete the mirror is dried and backed up with various coats of a special protective material.

    We were next shown through the glass decorators’, or embossers’, room. Here we observed in all stages of advancement mirror showcards for most of the principal brewing firms of this country — the names of Bass, Ind Coope, Worthington, Salt, Younger, McEwan, Fowler, and many others familiar to all who enjoy a glass of beer. When the artist receives his instructions as to design, size, &c., for one of these plates, he proceeds to make a drawing on paper of all that is to be produced on the glass, this being a much more difficult matter than one would suppose, owing to the design and lettering being done in the “negative”, or reverse, way, and, when finished, is spread out beneath the plate, which comes from the hands of the cutter the exact size required. The whole design is then carefully traced on the glass with a protective substance, which prepares it for the acid bath, the hydrofluoric acid acting on, or embossing, the parts left exposed. After being embossed it is then gilded, coloured, and lettered in a most elaborate manner, and, when finished, taken to the silverer, who gives it the mirror background, and it is then ready for being taken to the frame makers’ room, which we next visited, where a staff of frame makers is busily engaged not only in making frames for the showcards produced in the other departments, but also framing showcards extensively for other firms. Picture framing was also going on in all styles, and we were assured that an order for framing a single picture gets as carefully looked after as the largest contract.

    We were next conducted to the room where most of the small glass tablets are made, such as the firm supply so largely to the great advertising houses. This, like most of the other departments, consists entirely of skilled hand labour, as machinery does not lend itself to glass decoration in any way except for the production of a plainer class of work, and wholesale firms find that retailers will not hang up in their windows showcards that are not neat, attractive, and in unison with a well-got-up window. But in the making of these glass tablets division of labour is applied with great advantage, and the low price they are turned out at is simply astonishing.

    We next looked into what is known as the crystoleum room, where very plain-looking printed paper showcards are transferred to glass and embellished in such a manner as to transform them into most expensive looking things. This is often done by advertisers who find a stock of showcards on their hands which the retailers do not consider good enough to place in conspicuous positions. But these, after a course of treatment here, become highly attractive.

    We next visited the lithograpic printing room. Here are all the usual printing appliances, and we were shown a variety of cards, bills, labels, &c., being printed in colours from the stone ; also printing on metal, which style of show card is much in demand among exporters. After they are finished here they are removed to the japanning stoves.

    We concluded our visit by being shown through the ticket-writers’ room, where a staff of ticket-writers and draughtsmen is engaged in designing and writing all kinds of window tickets and showcards on paper, cardboard, &c. The variety of subjects requiring tickets or showcards is both amusing and surprising. At one table is a lot of neat gold-edged cards which are to draw the eye of the public to some very choice old brandy, wine, &c., and at another table is a lot of large mottoes, intended to hang round the walls of temperance or mission hall. But window-tickets for grocers, drapers, and all other trades in which the value and the quality of the goods are set forth most alluringly are being produced at every table.

    As the joiners’ workshops, the stores and stables, &c., are only a short distance from here — being situated in Cadogan Street — we had a run over to them. In the joiners’, or showcase makers’, shop we saw a number of showcases in progress for various purposes, which, after being finished, are glazed and frenchpolished before leaving here. Great skill is required in the making of these cases, as they must be so nicely fitted as to exclude both dust and air. A number of large wooden sign letters was also being made, each letter being nearly as large as the man who was working at them. The firm’s Edinburgh house is situated in the North Bridge.

    Such is this remarkable business, in which some ten or twelve different classes of tradesmen are employed, including artists, draughtsmen, chemists, artizans, &c., and whose productions find their way wherever the English language is spoken and elsewhere, as many of their showcards are written in foreign languages ; and the business, as a whole, is a striking monument of the fact that “Competition is the life of trade”.

Back to Index of Firms (1891)