Longest-serving and dedicated craftsmen

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 29

Longest-serving and dedicated craftsmen

D. N. Adams has for a long time been well respected for the quality of its products. It has earned and kept this reputation because of the dedication and skill of its printers and their long term service with the firm. Even though the printing trade has experienced vast changes in recent years with the demise of “hot metal” and the emergence of photo processing, D. N. Adams has kept a remarkably stable workforce. Mr Alan Davis is the company’s longest serving employee, joining in 1949 as a compositor. His major responsibility for the next 17 years was the production of the "New Zealand Home Journal.” In those days his department was staffed by 10 tradesmen producing virtually all the pre-press re-

quirements of the company in hot metal. With the development of computer typesetting, however, the lino machines have given way to the computer. As good as Mr Davis’s record may sound, he can-

not equal the long-serving duo of Mrs Gwen Payton (nee Wansbrough) and Mr Jack Burrell. Mrs Payton was a director of the company from 1934 until she died in 1974, while Mr Burrell was employed from 1933 until his retirement as factory manager in 1977. Miss Marian Andrews has been in the bindery section for 30 years while all the factory foremen have each had at least 15 years with the company. Although the staff look forward to the new facilities at Sandyford Street, it is with sorrow that they will be leaving behind the era of hot metal. The old era has not been forgotten. Much of the outdated equipment and typefaces will live on at Ferrymead, where it has been donated to the print society.