Wow!

Wow is all i can say about my visit to Anstey Wallpaper Company, The lady we met up with called Sabrina couldn't of been more helpful on our visit, even giving us Tea and Biscuits! 

We started off learning about the company and what Sabrina does in her job role, Anstey as a company do not design their own wallpapers, they do produce some designs of their own but only for sampling and examples of techniques. They are known to be one of the most versatile, professional and capable wall covering printers in the world also having the broadest machine profile in Europe. Their capabilities include combinations of surface, surflex, rotary screen, flexographic, gravure, long table, flat-screen, vacuum screen and hand block-printing on to paper, non-woven, vinyl and specialist substrates, most of which we had no idea what they where. Anstey are more manufacturing based than designing and producing their own collection, they work with other companies and designers all over the world, even down to helping graduates produce their wallpaper which i think is great that they don't limit themselves or find themselves too good for people starting out. Sabrina told us that they will help and work with whoever wants to make their artwork into wallpaper, even down to having your own personal helper in the design team to help make decisions and samples of colour and different techniques that can be used on your wallpaper. They offer advise on new machinery processes and techniques they could apply that they might never of heard of.

We then got shown around their design studio and sampling room in which all the colour matches/colour ways and sampling techniques are carried out to show smaller samples to the client. It was filled with examples of wallpaper, also a huge wall full of fabrics, surface pattern, colour swatches and texture which i thought was great!

We then got shown around where they produced their digital designs on a Mimaki printer, this printer printed designs of wallpaper out at a huge 54 inches wide which makes it easier to hang and also doesn't have any joins through the design. These are printed on a non woven paper which allows you to just paste the wall and not the back of the paper. The inks they use are placed on quite thick in order for the design to look like it has been hand printed on screen, so in order to dry this they use a UV light which allows them to print a bit quicker. We also got shown their new Mimaki printer which was still in its delivery box, they are in the middle of developing their digital printing process and with this new Mimaki it will allow them to print 4 rolls of wallpaper at a time on the one machine.

Then we got taken to the sample room and got shown samples going through the machine using engraved steel rollers, the engraved rollers are engraved with a diamond and allows to print very fine detail onto the wallpaper. We also got shown a different type of roller for a different printing technique called Flexographic printing, this is a rubber roller which allows to print a soft stamp effect onto wallpaper.

                                       

The next part of the factory we visited was the hand printing techniques part of the factory, We then got shown where they block print, which is the traditional way to creating wallpaper, and now the most expensive because its so labour intensive and beautifully handcrafted, Anstey have original William Morris blocks and now own them to produce and sell as original William morris pieces. It would take the craftsman one week to produce ten rolls, where the company as a whole produce 30,000 rolls a week. It is not very often they get orders for hand block printed wallpaper as it is so expensive and used mainly in stately homes or palaces.

Then we where shown what they call the long tables, as they are 30meters long. At the end they have a huge carriage which holds 3x2meter screens. The screen moves along the paper which will be placed on the table and it prints a screen, misses one and then prints again, by the time it has got to the end it then goes back to fill in the gaps its missed in order to give it time to dry so the screen doesn't leave marks on the paper. It produces 9 rolls as it produces three long and three wide. They also have a similar machine which does the same thing but the paper is attached to a conveyor belt and the paper moves instead of the screen.

 Also we got shown the room in which they colour mix the inks for the printers, they produce a barrel of one colour at a time and have different binders to use for example, pearl, glitter, white, opaque, metallic and translucent.

We then got taken into the noisy factory part. Anstey own machines to produce their wallpaper that are over 100years old, and seen as the first invention to manufacturing wallpaper. The ink is poured into a tray which then gets printed onto a felt blanket, the blanket then transfers it to a roller which then prints it onto the paper. It moves quickly through the machine and prints each part of the design on quite fast before it is even dry which is called wet on wet, it gives a squelshed effect which gives it a totally different look to any other techniques. If the wallpaper has a background colour the ink is sprayed on really quick and thick so it gives the wallpaper a texture. These inks they use on this machine are water based.

 The next machine we got shown used Flexographic printing with the rubber rollers, this machine uses a solvent based ink which is more environmentally friendly. Anstey recycle the fumes from the solvents which then goes on to heat the building. This makes it more environmentally friendly as once they have finished with water based inks they then go on to landfill and cannot be recycled.

We then got shown one of their newest machines which is their quickest, the machine costs £300 an hour to run which is a lot! It uses solvent inks that dry instantly, it then has eight different cylinders which all have individual colours to each part of the design, they are produced in layers so the first cylinder will be the background colour, then the second will be the next part of the design with the most colour, so when you get to the end its the smallest part of the design going on last. Watching it produce the wallpaper was so quick it flew through the machine creating meters and meters of the finished design in minuets. Unfortunately i couldn't get an image of this machine as the wallpaper it was producing was for a customer and had copy wright protecting their design, and obviously as it was only in production no one had seen this so they don't want their design out their before it has even been produced! 

A Weeks worth of wallpaper printing - 30,000 rolls

The last machine to produce wallpaper we saw was mainly for techniques once the wallpaper had been produced, the techniques this machine created was beading over the wallpaper to give it a shiny glittery texture, they do this by screen printing glue onto the wallpaper, then scattering beads across, the excess beads then get recycled and the paper goes through an oven to dry. The other process the machine did was embossing, the paper that goes through to emboss is vinyl paper, it gets heated in an oven to soften the PVC and then huge steel rollers (Costing £10,000 for one roller) then rolls over the paper to emboss the pattern which then gets cooled so the pattern stays on the paper. Anstey do have their own general linear steel rollers with patterns in which they allow customers to use as it is quite  pricey to have a steel roller produced for one range of wallpaper. But if a customer did pay for their own roller to be made it is then exclusive to them so no one else can use it and they can as much as they like.

We then got shown where the wallpaper goes after it is produced in huge rolls, it then gets unwind, checked for any faults or splodges of ink by someone actually sat their watching rolls and rolls speed past them, personally i didnt think they could see that fast but Sabrina explained that if they see a fault they press a button and the machine automatically puts it into a separate trash bin - and the bin was quite full so they must be good at their job!

It then gets cut into 10meter rolls, and finally gets sealed and labelled.

Finally we got taken to a huge warehouse where all the steel rollers where held, and i mean it was huge! there were thousands of rollers kept their for patterns for wallpaper. Sabrina said they keep these rollers for unto 5 years maximum and then the steel gets recycled as a design doesnt get used after five years.

After being shown around their company and getting a great insight into how wallpaper is produced we went back upstairs to their offices where we had tea and biscuits :) also a lovely chat about how Sabrina started, what she did at University and how she progressed to where she was today! She answered all of our questions and gave us some great books and examples of wallpaper to take home! Overall as you can see we had a great day and learnt a lot about how wallpaper is produced, different manufacturing processes and different techniques that can be used onto wallpaper. Its a a great way to see how the wallpaper is produced and get a greater understanding of how it works, how customers order and then go through the manufacturing process as it was nothing like i expected :)