Robert Smail's Printing Works
National Trust for Scotland
1 of 3At Robert Smail's Printing Works in Innerleithen, words are still assembled from individual pieces of type before historic presses put ink onto paper.
Smail's makes printing physical again. Established in 1866, the works printed the everyday material of a Borders community: advertisements, stationery, business cards, letterheads and its own local newspaper. The National Trust for Scotland has kept it as a working letterpress printing works, so the presses, type and skilled routines are not simply static exhibits. Its archives also preserve something less obvious: the businesses, people and changing life of Innerleithen itself.
It begins with individual pieces of type. So much concentration was needed to position every letter correctly before the work got near the press. The machinery, the lade and waterwheel all contribute to the mechanical story. Then there is the printed material itself: ordinary invoices, advertisements and stationery each revealing as much about a community as grand historical documents.
Smail's reminds me how much skilled work once sat behind an ordinary printed page. When standing in the Caseroom, handling type and seeing the presses work, it is hard not to appreciate the concentration and careful precision involved. The connections hidden in the archives are brilliant, including the fact that Robert Cowan Smail ran a shipping agency and sold liner tickets to people emigrating to Canada and America. A small Borders printworks suddenly opens into stories of work, communication, commerce and people travelling overseas.
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