Name

Hughes & Kimber.

Culture

English

Type

Organisation

Start date

1820

Start place

London, England View on map Close map

End date

1940

End place

London, England View on map Close map

Occupations

Art material supplier | Press maker

Summary

Located: England

Context

Australia

Biography

Hughes & Kimber, London, first traded as Richard Hughes 1820-1845, Mrs [Mary] Hughes 1848-50 and from 1850 - 1940 Hughes & Kimber. It specialised in printing supplies including letterpress, engraving and lithographic presses and all equipment and tools needed for the printing profession. They also catered for artist printmakers providing all necessary materials and tools including copper plates. See Jacob Simon, British artists' suppliers, 1650-1950, NPG website for full details.

Hughes & Kimber advertised in Australia from the mid-1860s catering for trade printers. (The Australasian (Melbourne), 19 October 1867, page 30). I have not seen any advertisements indicating they sold artist printmaking materials in Australia.

A small rolling press is in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum seems identical to that advertised in the Hughes & Kimber Catalogue of Machinery & Materials for Letterpress, Lithographic & Copperplate Printers and Bookbinders 1876, page 114, was donated to the museum by the NSW Lands Department in 1938.

The etched copper plate for Landscape a print by Louis Abrahams after a drawing by John Mather of 1886 has a Hughes & Kimber manufacturers mark on verso (private collection, Melbourne). This particular mark is contemporaneous with the image. Whistler used plates with this same mark, see Margaret F. MacDonald, Grischka Petri, Meg Hausberg, and Joanna Meacock, James McNeill Whistler: The Etchings, a catalogue raisonné, University of Glasgow, 2012, on-line website at https://etchings.arts.gla.ac.uk/catalogue/plateimg/?filename=PK254_01

[Roger Butler, 2022]

Last Updated

25 Jan 2023