REPLICA HOLTZAPPFEL & Co PARLOR PRESS

Our replica Parlor Press is based on a design by the engineering firm Holtzappfel & Co., which produced a series of small presses in the 1830s.

The Parlor Press was designed by the English printer and inventor Edward Cowper. James Moran speculates in his book Printing Presses that Cowper’s design might have been inspired by a much older invention called a “Bellows Press.” Cowper also worked on improving flatbed and cylinder presses at the Bank of England and the Times with his brother-in-law, Augustus Applegath.

In 1839 Holtzappfel & Co., which had made small-scale Stanhope presses, began to manufacture Cowper’s Parlor Press. No copy of the first set of instructions seems to have survived but the third edition of the press’s manual, Printing Apparatus for the Use of Amateurs (1846) contains descriptions of three sizes of Cowper’s press and of Holtzappfel’s Monotype printing press.

As the name suggests, the Parlor Press was mostly used by Victorian hobbyists who wanted to print cards for fun in the comfort of their own parlor. For some reason the Parlor Press did not catch on in America to the extent that it did in England. In the states, small job platens became the most popular press for amateurs.