Robert Smail’s Printing Works comprises a double shop frontage at No. 7 and No. 9 Innerleithen High Street, in the Borders. It was a printing works and stationers from 1847 – 1985. Today the buildings are preserved much as they were in late Victorian times, with an office, paper store, composing and press rooms.

I was commissioned to carry out the paint analysis of the shop front.

Cross section made from the shadowing of the letter “A” on the fascia. Note how the first scheme was both varnished and gilded.

There appear to have been about fifteen decorative schemes on the shop front of Robert Smail’s Printing Works. For the first forty or fifty years the external joinery was in shades of brown. Initially it was grained in imitation of dark oak and in the early years of the twentieth century it was painted in a dark brown and varnished.

Robert Smails Printing Works – credit www.scotland4thesenses.blogspot.co.uk

Printing Works – credit http://mouseandmuse.wordpress.com/




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