Category: Press and typeface identification
Later topic: Challenge Style 20KP, #5465
Earlier topic: Please help with press identification

Vandercook type press with the badge SRL on it

I work in a printers, now digital but used to be letterpress.

I was rooting around the other day and found a Vandercook style press but with the badge SRL on one end.

Is anyone able to identify this press for me?

Cheers.

Karl

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SRL stands for Sydney R. Littlejohn which was a London printing equipment manufacturer. Their No. 2 and Type 105 presses (with and adjustable bed and swing out paper shelves beneath the feed board) is nearly identical to a later model Vandercook 219.
see: http://vandercookpress.info/srl.html

Also: c.1960 Western Printing Equipment in Reading built a 219 under license from Vandercook. See my blog post “British-built Vandercooks”: http://vandercookpress.info/vanderblog/2008/09/10/exported-and-british-b....

SRL was the UK firm Sidney R Littlejohn. Their presses are nearly but not entirely identical to Vandercook presses, perhaps done under license. See http://vandercookpress.info (particularly the other brands section), and see the brief discussion on Vanderblog.

  • Paul Moxon
  • on 25 Aug 09 (09:26)
  • Updated 26 Aug 09 (14:56)

I should mention that it was Eric (parallel_imp) who first informed me about Littlejohn and provided a print ad from The Penrose Annual. Other images of SRL presses can be found in The British Printer Catalog: Specification Manual of Printing Machinery (1961).

Thanks for your help guys!!
I couldn’t find out anything at all about them.

So, do they fetch around the same price as a vandercook?

Karl

Karl, you should be able to buy presses cheaper in the UK than in the US, but you might have to do a bit more searching. There have been lots of similar machines in the UK in use. Check out the BPS.