John Brown, the Managing Director of Light Impressions (Europe) who, when he was running Holographic Developments Ltd in the late 1970s, was one of the first people to promote holography in the UK, contacted me recently to suggest that, since LI had been bought by Opsec and they were closing the Leatherhead operation, I might like to pay them a visit and liberate some material for my archive before it was chucked in a skip. Just the kind of invitation I enjoy! So today I paid my first visit to Leatherhead in over 15 years and found John and Inaki Beguiristain sorting through the remaining stock and dismantling equipment - definitely a sad occasion for John after over twenty years on the site overseeing the production of millions of holograms. However, he cheerfully invited me into a store room where samples of the many and various applications to which Light Impressions holograms had been put had been laid to rest and said "Help Yourself". A couple of hours and several archive boxes later and I staggered out to my car, laden with goodies: packaging, stickers, toys, clothing, catalogues, magazines, CDs - you name it - and, to top it all, a metre square rainbow hologram that had been produced for Tiffany's UK sometime in the '80s (how JB came to have it is a long story). A very generous donation to the Ross Collection which will take a while to document and archive, and definitely containing a few treasures. Thank you, John!
Here is a picture of JB and Inaki with some of the material destined for the skip
and here is some of the LI Horde, laid out on my archive floor
Considering that Patrick Boyd has recently entrusted his archive to my safe-keeping, I am going to need to get some extra storage soon.
http://www.jrholocollection.com/collection/lightimpress.html
