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Business History

Lyon and Blair, Engravers, Steam b&w photographic printers, Lithographers and Stationery Supplies. Lambton Quay, 1895

Letter from Lyon and Blair regarding application for water service to premises, Lambton Quay, 1878

Typo : a monthly newspaper and literary review devoted to the advancement of the typographic art and the interests of the printing, publishing, bookselling, stationery, and kindred trades

Printed Examples

Wellington Harbour improvements, General plan; Drawing No.1

Materialism : a lecture delivered before the Union Debating Society

The monthly review

Sketch of the work of the Catholic Church for the last half-century in the Archdiocese of Wellington, New Zealand

New and complete manual of Maori conversation : containing phrases and dialogues on a variety of useful and interesting topics : together with a few general rules of grammar : and a comprehensive vocabulary

Fairy tales and folk-lore of New Zealand and the South

Lyon and Blair, Engravers, Steam b&w photographic printers, Lithographers and Stationery Supplies. Lambton Quay,

1895

1895

Source copy consulted: Reproduced from the Wellington City Archives Collection, 00138:0:12270

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Lyon and Blair, Engravers, Steam b&w photographic printers, Lithographers and Stationery Supplies. Lambton Quay, 1895.

Lyon & Blair was an old and established company which began life as a bookselling and stationery shop on Lambton Quay in 1840. It was founded by William Lyon, one of the town's original settlers, who was a newspaperman, politician, and founder of the Wellington Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute Library. Lyon's son was joined in the family business by a Scottish compatriot, John Rutherford Blair, in 1874. Blair helped the firm diversify and soon Lyon & Blair was renowned throughout the colony for printing works by Tregear and Aubert, for their excellent colour lithography, for their pamphlets which featured social reform and political themes, and for periodical publications including The Monthly Review and the Journal of the Polynesian Society. In 1894, Blair sold the thriving business to Whitcombe & Tombs.

Further Reading:

  • John Muir, "Headpieces and fairy tales: Wellington's Lyon & Blair, fl 1874-1894: an annotated bibliography" Victoria University of Wellington , New Zealand: MLIS research project, ( 1998.)
 
    
     

 

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