01
Certificates and diplomas
Awarding bodies, colleges and professional institutes. Engraved plate, house paper, sequential numbering, and a register we keep on your behalf.
Security printers and certificate engravers since 1874
Documents that hold up when somebody checks them.
We engrave and print certificates, share certificates, provenance seals, event tickets, bonded tax stamps and authentication labels — for institutions that need the holder, and a stranger, to be able to tell a genuine one from a copy.
- Founded
- 1874
- Security features
- 8
- Plates
- Cut in-house
- Minimum run
- 25
Founded on plate-cutting and proofing done by hand. The equipment has changed; the habit of checking a proof under a loupe before it goes anywhere near a press has not.
What we make
01
02
Share and membership certificates
Guilloche borders, latent value panels and blind-embossed seals, printed to registrar requirements.
03
Provenance seals and labels
Tamper-evident authentication for galleries, makers and archives, each one tied to a record.
04
Tickets and passes
Numbered, perforated, machine-readable where you need it, with features a phone camera cannot reproduce.
05
Duty and revenue stamps
For bonded warehouses and revenue boards, to a specification agreed with the issuing authority.
06
Plate cutting and restoration
New steel cut by hand, and old plates re-cut where the original engraver is long gone.
Examine a specimen
This is how one of our documents is actually inspected: not read, but magnified. Each step of the rail shows a different layer — the whole sheet, its regions, the individual features, the hairline, and finally the paper.
Magnification
×1.0
Click to examine
Security features
Listed in the order an examination actually proceeds — the first need nothing but a window and a thumb, the last needs a laboratory.
SF-01
Watermark — Substitution of ordinary paper for house stock.
SF-02
Recess engraving (intaglio) — Flat reproduction by scanning, photocopying or digital press.
SF-03
Split-duct (rainbow) printing — Reproduction by a process that separates the image into fixed inks.
SF-04
Guilloche rosette — Freehand redrawing and imitation by tracing.
SF-05
Latent image — Copying by any process that records the image from one angle only.
SF-06
UV-reactive fibres — Substitution of visually similar commercial paper stock.
SF-07
Microtext — Reproduction at consumer scanning and printing resolutions.
SF-08
Forensic taggant — Disputes about origin, and the passing-off of genuine-looking copies.
How a commission runs
Threat assessment
What is this document worth to somebody who wants to fake it, and who will actually be checking it — a registrar, a doorman, or nobody at all? That answer sets the specification, not our catalogue.
Specification and quotation
A written schedule of features, substrate, run length and numbering, with a fixed price and a lead time. Nothing on it is there to pad the invoice.
Plate cutting and proofing
Plates are cut in-house and proofed on the final paper. You approve a physical proof, in your hands, before the run.
Run, register and delivery
Numbered sequentially, reconciled against the register, spoilage destroyed under witness, and the register kept for the life of the issue.
Tell us what the document has to survive.
Send the run length, who will be checking it, and what happens if a copy gets through. We will come back with a specification and a price, not a brochure.