Brunswick piano 'n' radio . Part II ...
By Karl Ellison
A week ago, I wrote ...
>>I was at my local restorer's shop Saturday. He showed me something that both he and I don't think >>we'll ever see again in our lives.
First, thanx to Jody for the phone number of the Chicago Cultural Center ... they forwarded me to The Brunswick Corp, Lake Forest, IL. directly. I talked with the cultural center's exhibit "curator" - Gene Fisher, who could not identify by description the Brunswich piano/radio. I am going to send him a few pictures.
Gene sed that if it's made from wood, and made in the '20's, they probably made it. They stopped making radios back in the mid 30's.
Robin Pratt: The player is a "Recordo". I understand that they only can reproduce 4 levels of expression, and the soft pedal usage doubles it to 8, so I guess they're what's called a "partial" reproducer.
I also found out that the paino unit is a "B. H. Janssen, 1901" ... *NOT* the Janssen Co. In NYC that you've probably hear of. It stand to reason: the serial numbers for the NYC Janssen, in 1931 started at "71,400", where the piano unit marked 1929 has a serial number of "1061" ... no logical match here, so it must be another person/Co's name.
Anyway, Gene from Brunswick said that he had never known Brunswick to have made a piano, and he may very well be right. He has a partial list of where their products have been incorporated into over the years, so he'll have a better picture after seeing the snapshots. He also told me that it is incredible what hoops he has to jump thru to aquire objects that his company has made, from private collections. I guess that's par-for-the-course. What's junk today is priceless tomorrow, and someone in the '40 cleaned out the files of that "old stuff we used to make" <sob>.
Anyway, when I hear from Gene, I'll pass on abny cogent info that may surface.
- Karl (KBELLISON@aol.com)
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(Message sent Wed 30 Aug 1995, 21:49:00 GMT, from time zone GMT-0400.) |
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