Hello everybody, these are the 4 Swedius Astarte 200 I've found lately. The first one on the left belonged to a person that was in the Arma dei Carabinieri in the '50 and received it as part of his equipment. This lamp is a particular variation of the Astarte 200. On the fuel cap it has the word "Swedius", on the globe "Pyrex Astarte", on the tank only "HK 200". The lamp came with the Astarte paper folder containing the tool and with the brass can you can see on the pictures. On the jet you can read "fair 200" but I guess it's a replacement. The 2 in the middle are basically identical, nowhere on these lamps you can find the word "Swedius", but only "Astarte" and "Made in Italy". On the knob the word "Astarte". The last one is interesting because it clearly suggests a connection between "Swedius" and "Astarte". Same knob of the 2 in the middle, but it says "Swedius" instead of "Astarte". The knob is broken and I'm sorry but I missed to take a close up picture of it. The tank is the only place where I can see some markings. A huge "SWEDIUS" logo, the "HK 200" that is present on every tank and another strange marking (hard to take a picture) with something like a shield with KUL on it anbd two horses? on the sides. What I guess is that Swedius is the manufacturer or something alike and it was marking and producing lamps for the italian police. Probably the lamp marked Astarte was a version for the public. This is all, for any question I'm here. I'll post the pictures of every lamp in separate posts, next. Cheers, Nicola
A good post Lamp 4. I'm sure the two horses are two lions and is there some letters on the shield at the bottom? That's as far as my help goes. Good luck on finding answers to these lanterns.
G'day Nicola, Yes those letters are on the top of the shield, but I meant the bottom of the shield. It could be scratches and corrosion but these look like letters.
The shield looks like it contains a large letter A, where the KUL are written through the top part. Maybe the A stands for Astarte. With a name like Swedius, I wonder if there was a connection between Optimus and the factory making these lanterns.
Hi Nils, you're probably right about the A within the shield. Not sure about a connection with Optimus, I believe that the choice to use Swedius is related to the cloning only, for sure these lamps don't have the Optimus quality. I will clean more the tank to better see the marking and I'll post some more pics. Nicola
Hi, I have an update. I just found some images of the instructions booklet of an Astarte/Swedius and on it there is the producer's name: Fratelli Vautier S.p.a. Napoli. I made some google search and the factory still exists, its name is Ben Vautier Metalmeccanica S.p.a. Reading the history (photo attached) everything has a sense, in fact this factory started the production of lanterns and lamps in England in 1924. 3 years later the factory moved to Napoli to produce the famous "lampare" for fishing purposes (Napoli probably was a good place where to produce and sell these lamps). The production of lamps ended in 1961, when the factory started to produce metal and plastic parts for the automotive segment. Here the images: Nicola
