30th Anniversary Special
Congratulations are in order C
By Geoff Thorne, managing director, Jester Prints
ongratulations to Printwear & Promotion magazine on its 30th anniversary year! As part of their nostalgic look back over the past 30 years of textile printing, I’m fl attered that they asked for an older gentleman’s recollection of his journey of making transfers with Jester Prints from its inception to date. Some of my recollections may be slightly incorrect in one way or another, because it was a long time ago and memories often play tricks on one’s mind!
Newcomers Newcomers fi nding their feet in transfer production today would almost certainly come into it via digital technology and may never have to coat a screen or pick up a squeegee for their whole career.
So completely the opposite to how I, and any old timers like me, came into it. When I started Jester Prints as a one-man band in 1976, I had no idea
that almost 50 years later it would still be the way I make my living. In 1976 heat applied transfers for T shirts were relatively new and all made by screen printing plastisol ink onto a release coated paper, often siliconised parchment paper. In England the fi rst company I became aware of which manufactured heat applied transfers was Imagine in Braintree.
There were others dotted around the world including several in America such as Roach which seemed to be ahead of the game when compared to the British, but the subject matter of the company’s standard designs was geared for the American market and subsequently didn’t sell as well as domestically produced transfers with a typically British sense of humour subject matter.
The early days
In the early days I regarded transfer production almost as a craft. I originally hand printed the designs on a vacuum
table and gelled the prints in an oven. It was amazing that anything worked. Coming up-to-date, although around half the transfers we make are still screen printed, digital printing technology has really made its presence felt and an increasing number of the transfers we now make include at least an element of digital printing technology.
And there are now so many diverse means of transfer production that I’m sure that I’m not aware of every production method being used. Additionally, I’ve probably forgotten about some of the transfer types and their production methods that have come and gone over the years.
But what it comes down to is that every new method of printing garments has nibbled away at the traditional transfer market and made it increasingly diffi cult to maintain the turnover built up over the years.
The first transfer type I remember that could be home produced was the photo copier/ printer that could be fitted with special toners in order to make sublimation transfers. I didn’t ever use one of these machines but they could have been good to make football shirt sponsor transfers. The major limitation was that the prints would only work on light coloured high polyester content garments and that the coloured had no opacity so for instance a yellow design couldn’t be printed onto a red garment. That led onto the range of image transfer papers for use with toner- based photocopiers and printers which permitted full colour printing onto white cotton T shirts. This type of print has been the basis for many small printers supplying one off or short run T shirts for clubs and events etc.
Opening the door
A clipping from a local paper showing Geoff Throne pictured in the mid-80s after donating T shirts to a local youth group
| 38 | January 2022
More recently was the introduction of the white toner printer which opened the door to printing onto dark coloured T shirts.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
C
el e b
rating 30 y e a r s
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