▲Coloursource has recently became available to purchase through Winter & Company offer a suite of bespoke colour-matching services, and building a vast portfolio of over 2,000 individual live shades on-site – including 184 blacks and 62 whites. There is as much variety and skill in mastering whites and blacks as there is for every shade in between. The Cropper family were originally Quakers, the famously trustworthy non-conformist sect, and I believe this has inspired our values down the generations. Acting with care and responsibility are core values of James Cropper today and inform how we interact with our people, customers, community, and environment. Our third core value, to be forward-thinking, is similarly deep-rooted. From the earliest years of our business, we have sought out new technologies and markets as they evolved, including railways and, by 1900, insulating paper for electric cables. However, perhaps our most important decision was to begin making coloured papers in the 1850s in response to the chronic shortage of good paper-making fibre. We found unwanted and dirty waste fibres and transformed them into a range of coloured papers, making use of the new and emerging dye industry. Our founder and my three times great-grandfather always maintained that “nothing opens itself out to such constant development as paper,” and this belief is still a guiding light for us to this day. The story of colour is one that’s worth preserving. But while there were once dozens of colour paper mills in the UK, today we are the sole survivor. That means we have a singular responsibility to preserve the art and craft of coloured paper. James Cropper is also one of only a handful of colour mills globally. However, no other papermaker in the world allows customers to customise their colours and other specifications to such an extent and could never begin to do this: it has taken generations to build this capability. Without us, anyone wanting coloured paper would have a much more limited choice, so I feel it is fundamentally important to preserve this. ▼Jame Cropper has been headquartered in Cumbria for 180 years 30 email: editor@printmonthly.co.uk Issue 357 - November | December 2025 The Cropper family were originally Quakers, the famously trustworthy non-conformist sect, and I believe this has inspired our values down the generations James Cropper’s colour lab offers over 2,00 live shades, including 184 blacks, and 62 whites. The company recently released Coloursource, a collection of 50 signature shades honed over half a century, available in numerous weights and embossed patterns Factoid CELEBRATING 180 YEARS OF JAMES CROPPER
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