Last week I subscribed to the Mechanical Music Digest pages.
I hope that I am allowed to use this marvelous medium to obtain
information on the dance-hall organs and orchestrions built by
Th. Mortier in Antwerp, Belgium.  In the archive of the articles
presented in the MMD there was no news about this subject, but perhaps
some of the readers are able to help me.

I am writing a book with the provisional title "The Mortier Story",
which will handle the history on the firm Mortier and the organs they
built between ca. 1900-1948.  I already have a lot of unknown material
from the Antwerp archives and other sources.  Last year I published two
articles about the Mortier firm in "Het Pierement", the magazine of the
Dutch "Kring van Draaiorgelvrienden".  Here follows a very short
summary:

Theophile Mortier (1855-1944) began, as the owner of a large Antwerp
cafe-dansant, to import and rent out Gavioli organs.  I found a docu-
ment which proves that already in 1887 he sold organs and supplied
music cylinders to customers.  The success of his organ-renting formula
was such that in 1898 the company began to build its own book-playing
organs.  After 1905, the year that the church organ specialist
Guillaume Bax entered the firm, Mortier became the most important
provider of large dance-hall organs in Belgium.  Many were the
technical and musical improvements invented by Bax; he introduced
registers such as the Baxophone, the Jazz-flute and the Vibraton.

More than 600 large dance-hall organs and orchestrions (some included
a piano!) were built in the Mortier factory during the first half of
the 20th century.  Production reached its peak between 1919 and 1928.
In the 'thirties, the years after the great world crisis, Mortier
continued to build large dance organs in a more modern style.  After
World War Two the increasing competition of the gramophone, the
wireless and the juke-box brought the firm into liquidation in 1952.

Most of the Mortier organs fell into disuse and were finally de-
molished.  A few instruments in the Netherlands were converted into
street organs.  Many spectacular Mortier organs were sold to England,
the United States and Japan, where nowadays they can be found in
private collections and in museums.

I have made a list of all known Mortier organs and orchestrions which
still bear their original factory number.  The list is available on
request, but I hope that someone can surprise me with numbers which
are not yet on my list.  I will be glad to receive any additional
information on these instruments.

Because I am a music arranger myself, I am also interested in original
music books which were supplied by the Mortier company.  These have the
Mortier label in front of the book, and, written in ink inside the
first page, there is a factory-number and the title and composer men-
tioned.  Obviously these books must date from before 1952!

Which organ owner still has some original Mortier-books with his organ?
(Yes, I also collect these book-numbers and titles.)

I know the existence of various Mortier organs outside Holland and
Belgium, but perhaps there are some "hidden" instruments.  Therefore
I should like to ask anyone who owns an original Mortier organ himself,
or knows one in his environment, to send me a message - either through
the MDD directly or to my e-mail address, <tommanda@zeelandnet.nl>.

Regards from Holland,

Tom Meijer