How Hull Coloured the World: The inside story of Sissons'' Paints and Hall''s Distemper

Sissons' Paints was part of Hull. For over 150 years, the Sissons family, through six generations, treated their ever-expanding company workforce as an extension of that family. Loyalty and long service was a habit established in the nineteenth century which continued to the last days in the boardroom and on the factory floor. The story brings together trade developments, company history, scientific discovery, times of relaxation, family celebrations and tragedies. The success of the Sissons lay in the strength of their marketing of superior products, notably Hall'sDistemper (the Men and plank logo), in Britain and across the world, with presences in Argentina, Canada, India, the United States and Australia before the First World War. The ultimate demise of the company was brought about by changes in their customer base, which went unnoticed for too long. Hundreds of illustrations - of staff at work and at play, of the workplace, of the family, of advertisements and marketing, of company documents, of the consequences of war - complement the text. Brought together by Anthony Sissons, with material from the archive of his father, Richard Chamberlin Sissons, and edited by his daughter, Christiana Sissons Moore, this is a family history with a difference - the family is Hull. See more