3-065-655 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The manufacture of Valentines, 1874. Premises of Eugene Rimmel, the 'eminent perfumer', and of George Meek in London: 'Gold and Silver Printing; Putting on the Leaf; Taking off Waste Leaf; Cutting out Ornaments; Making; Folding; Embossing; Lacing;...Our first three Illustrations show the laying on of the gold or silver leaf...; the impressing it on the moist paper, by the use of a small hand-press; and the wiping off of the waste fragments of this shining tissue. In the next Illustration...we see the cutting out of patterns in the paper...At the bottom of the page, in the middle, is a ponderous machine, called a "tympan"...used for embossing the paper...[Next] comes the process of lacing...Several young women or girls are employed in trimming and folding [the] ornamental paper...Mr. Rimmel's busy and pleasant work-rooms...are very extensive, and from eighty to a hundred and fifty industrious females...may be found here engaged in most congenial work. It is an agreeable sight to watch their skilful fingers, and to notice how they enjoy the exercise of that natural taste for the pretty, the neat, and the convenient, which belongs to their clever sex. A more cheerful place and scene of labour can nowhere be visited'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.