Re: Digest 97.10.16
The Wagener Museum has several pianos, including an upright and a vorsetzer
acquired from me when they set up the museum about twenty-five years ago.
Yes, the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland also has a piano on
display. I haven't seen it for many years but from memory it's an
electrified pumper. They also have a street organ, currently under
restoration. At one time they had a Reproduco Piano/Pipe Organ, bought
from the collection of the late Jerry Cohen of California. Having acquired
it they had a change of policy and offered it to me. It's now a part of my
collection.
New Zealand is not rich in original coin pianos. My research over many
years has produced records of only one orchestrion, brought to Christchurch
by a restauranteur in the very early 1920s and destroyed in a fire before
WW2. Odd really because there are a lot of pumpers here, although not many
reproducers. And most of those that have surfaced are uprights. To my
knowledge the only other coin pianos in this country have been imported in
recent years by collectors.
Michael Woolf
New Zealand
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