Garrod and Lofthouse were a British printing company based in Chaldon Road,

Caterham Caterham () is a town in the Tandridge (district), Tandridge district of Surrey, England. The town is administratively divided into two: Caterham on the Hill, and Caterham Valley, which includes the main town centre in the middle of a dry valle ...

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

, who manufactured

record sleeve A record sleeve is the outer covering of a vinyl record. Alternative terms are ''dust sleeve'', ''album liner'' and ''liner''. The term is also used to denominate the outermost cardboard covering of a record, i.e. the ''record jacket'' or ''albu ...

s. In 1963, the company patented the design for Two-Piece sleeves that were used in the UK. The advantage of these sleeves, in the days of single colour printing, was that the four-colour front was printed on a separate sheet to the single colour back and the two halves were then glued together as the sleeve was fabricated. This allowed half the number of passes through a printing press to produce the front cover, and a quarter for the monochrome backs. This gave a reduction in print costs of 37.5%. As the two fronts could be laminated together, it halved the amount of laminating time. Because of these cost reductions the company were contracted to print sleeves for 90% of all

EMI EMI Group Limited (formerly EMI Group plc until 2007; originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At t ...

affiliated labels volume on the basis that they never produced a sleeve for

Decca Records Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis (Decca), Edward Lewis after his acquisition of a gramophone manufacturer, The Decca Gramophone Company. It set up an American subsidiary under the Decca name, which bec ...

, their only major competitor. They are therefore credited on all original LP releases of

the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...

, including ''

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' (often referred to simply as ''Sgt. Pepper'') is the eighth studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. Released on 26May 1967, ''Sgt. Pepper'' is regarded by musicologists as an early concept ...

''. Garrod and Lofthouse printed for most UK record companies outside Decca, and manufactured covers for France through a subsidiary Imprimerie du Nord. They were given special permission to press the

Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones are an English Rock music, rock band formed in London in 1962. Active for over six decades, they are one of the most popular, influential, and enduring bands of the Album era, rock era. In the early 1960s, the band pione ...

' ''

Beggars Banquet ''Beggars Banquet'' is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 6 December 1968 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States. It was the first Rolling Stones album pro ...

'' (one of the first gatefold sleeves) and ''

Sticky Fingers ''Sticky Fingers'' is the ninth studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. It was released on 23 April 1971 on the Rolling Stones' new label, Rolling Stones Records. The Rolling Stones had been contracted by Decca Records an ...

'' (manufactured with a metal zip glued down the front), as Decca's in-house staff could not manage the complex production to the volume required. The company was liquidated in 1988, by which time sleeve manufacturing could be done by any generic process, and

cassette Cassette may refer to: Technology * Cassette (format) (or ''cassette tape''), a format that contains magnetic tape for audio, video, and data storage and playback * Compact Cassette, a worldwide standard for analog audio recording and playback ...

and

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

sleeves did not require carboard printing.

References

External links

The Beatles U.K. Guide
- explains how and where Garrod and Lofthouse can be identified on Beatles LPs Printing companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in Surrey {{UK-company-stub