On Cathedral Street in Glasgow, the building that housed William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd was rarely quiet. Through the 1960s, this publishing factory ran at full pace, producing books from start to finish under one roof. Typists sat in rows, converting handwritten manuscripts into clean, typed pages. Every keystroke moved a story one step closer to the shelf.
Once the text was ready, typesetters took over. They arranged individual letters and symbols by hand, assembling columns of type that would eventually be pressed onto paper. It was slow, exact work. A single misplaced letter could mean reprinting an entire page.
Artists at the factory painted illustrations for books covering everything from children’s stories to reference works. Using brushes and palettes, they produced images that added color and character to the finished pages. Their work gave visual weight to the text alongside it.
Among the most striking crafts practiced at Collins was paper marbling. Skilled marblers swirled colored inks across the surface of a water bath, then laid paper over it to lift the pattern. No two sheets came out the same. These marbled pages appeared on book covers and endpapers, giving each volume a distinct, handcrafted quality. The techniques had been passed down through generations of artisans.
Once the pages were printed, bookbinders and stitchers brought everything together. Stitching machines secured the pages into signatures — groups of folded sheets — before hard covers were attached. The machines hummed constantly through the working day, threading books together with speed and precision.
Bibles were among the most carefully handled products in the factory. Workers packed and cased them with particular attention, as the binding and presentation of a Bible had to meet high standards. These were books expected to last decades, and the staff treated them accordingly.
Packing teams at the end of the line wrapped and boxed the completed books for dispatch. Administrators tracked orders, scheduled production runs, and managed the flow of materials through every department. Without this coordination, the factory’s output — thousands of books — would have ground to a halt.
The factory also opened its doors to visitors on special occasions, giving the public a direct look at how books moved from raw materials to finished products. Workers demonstrated their skills in real time, showing exactly what it took to produce a single volume.
