We love learning about our history here at Dempsey & Carroll, so imagine our excitement when we unearthed this 1879 article from The Home Journal, the publication that would become Town & Country in the new century. Reading an outsider’s perspective of the company’s operations was a real treat for us.

The love of elegance and exquisite finish in stationery is no new love, but elegance and finish are not in themselves artistic, they are simply the last result of mere mechanical execution. We take especial pleasure, therefore, in calling attention to the work of Messrs. Dempsey & Carroll, who have earned for themselves the honourable designation of “Art Stationers.”

The writer goes on to describe how visiting the “retail order department” of Dempsey & Carroll, on the floor of The Meriden Britannia Company’s showroom, is merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Once conducted upstairs by “one of the genial Mssrs. Carrolls” (referring to George and his son Manfred) a much more complete picture of the company was illuminated.

This floor, what with its designers, its engravers, its lithographers, its various steam and hand driven presses, their attendants, and others variously occupied, presents a scene of most animated life, and one might spend an hour or two here very profitably, studying the inner mysteries of this stationer’s art.

The turn-of-the-century phrasing is really delightful, though some of the more flowery sentences seem to go on for entire paragraphs!