When Edward Hunter and Archie Hughes founded Anglo Engraving in 1898, they wanted to use the name ‘Sun Engraving,’ but it was already in use. It was not until 1911 that the desired name became available and they were able to register it.

Why Edward Hunter wanted to use the name ‘Sun Engraving’ is not known. His daughter, Eileen, speculates in her book about him that it was because his children were all girls and he wanted a son. This does not seem plausible because, apart from anything else, when he first set his heart on the name in 1898 he had only just completed his apprenticeship and hadn’t even thought about marriage, let alone having a family.

It is possible that he associated the sun with light and timeliness (through the sundial) and felt this would help promote his business, but we think that the most probable explanation lies in J.N. Niépce’s coinage of the term heliogravure, in the 1820s, to mean the process of photographic engraving. The word heliogravure, translated literally, means sun engraving.

The motif of a sundial with rays impinging upon it was used fairly consistently from the moment the name became available in 1911, but the words underneath varied. The logo above is the form that appears on a letterhead of 1918, with the motto I KEEP THE TIME.

Believe it or not, Sun Engraving had a coat of arms, too! This whimsical creation appears on the outside back cover of the Christmas 1919 number of Sun’s promotional publication Illustration, and here a benign Sun gazes down on a pair of portly black dragons displaying armorial bearings containing (top left) a jug of ferric chloride etchant; (top right) a pair of gravers, crossed; (bottom left) an inking roller; and (bottom right) what? ... does anyone have any suggestions?

The latin motto sol omnia solvit means ‘The Sun solves everything.’

Another issue of Illustration, undated but likely published in the late 1920s, featured this proud motif on its back cover.

Note: We have seen only two issues of Illustration so far. It is possible that every issue boasted a different company motif.

By 1929, when The Sun Compendium appeared, the motto I KEEP THE TIME had changed to SUN KEEPS TIME, but the outside front cover of the book shows a plain sundial, without rays, and THE SUN KEEPS TIME. The endpapers, interestingly, still show the motto I KEEP THE TIME, along with a plain sundial (and other elements, in a repeat pattern), so the Compendium uses three different forms of the idea!

On page 44 of the Compendium another logo design appears, perhaps only to demonstrate the difference between Line Work and Half Line Work. This version does not seem to have been adopted for general use.

The sun image appeared in all manner of ways in Sun Engraving publicity pieces. A fanciful ‘Sun services’ map, drawn in 1927 by E.G. Perman and used in The Sun Compendium of 1929, contains no fewer than thirteen suns among the ships, cathedrals, and sea creatures.

In the splendid Sun Type Book of about 1932/33, the logo appears repeatedly on the pages that show photos of the different departments and the well-landscaped grounds, while elsewhere, the sun and its rays blaze away in all directions as if the company had cut its terrestrial ties and drifted up into the stratosphere.

The sundial reappears – but without a motto – in the outstanding promotional publication Sungravure Printing Equipment of 1938, and the inside back cover of this publication shows a more contemporary design in which the sundial seems to become one of the sun’s rays.

The separation of Sun’s printing operations in 1945 (to form the newly named Sun Printers) required the adoption of a new logo; now the sun rises behind the spread of a magazine on whose pages the initials S and P appear. The example shown is from a ‘With Compliments’ card from the 1950s, which was printed in the company colours of the time (red and green).

Sun Printers modernized its look in 1977. The sun now doubled as a gravure cylinder, and the positioning of the company name represented a printed sheet as it came off the cylinder.

 

Sun Printers’ corporate seal as used on Alan Clark’s apprenticeship indenture of 1947.

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Can anyone shed more light on the evolution of the various logos that carried the Sun name? If you have more information, please contact us. See the ‘About Us’ page for addresses.