Hello all, I paid a visit to a fellow collector here in the UK this week
and he showed me a musical box, the design of which I had not seen
before.
It was a Ducummon Girod cylinder box, with a cylinder about 13 inches
long, playing 6 airs with an organ accompaniment. The organ keys were on
the extreme bass end, (not in the centre as on mine and most others I
have seen). The left-hand side of the cylinder had a complete
lever-wound spring and governor assembly to run the musical box, and on
the right-hand side was an identical lever-wound spring and governor to
pump the small bellows.
The benefit, of course, was that we could not bother with winding the
organ spring, and just hear the musical combs. I guess that it would
date from 1870, but the lid to the case was particularly nicely inlaid.
The collector believes that it is unique, but I would personally doubt
that, as no musical box manufacturer could afford to spend the R&D just
to make one box. So are there any others similar to this one?
Brian Chesters
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