Dear MMDs,

An auction of mechanical musical instruments will take place in
Chartres, France (1 hour by car or by train from Paris) on Sunday, May
29, beginning at 2 p.m.

Among the interesting items (240 lots), are:

  Many fine automata, some from the former Maison Decamps workshop
  and some others from a Japanese collection.  Automata by Decamps,
  Roullet-Decamps, Lambert, Renou, Vichy, Farkas, Marcu, and an
  especially fine "Clown on the Moon", by Roullet-Decamps.

  Several good fairground artifacts.

  Musical instruments: Several good cylinder pianos, a fine portable
  reed organ by Robino in Manchester, good modern portable organs
  (Raffin, Fournier, etc.), a 42-key Odin organ from the famous street
  singer Claude Reboul, parlor cylinder organs by Thibouville and by
  Benoit.

  Cylinder and disc musical boxes, including two fine large upright
  Symphonion music boxes.

  Organettes (Thibouville, Ariston) and many musical novelties.

  An exceptionally large Black Forest cuckoo clock (four feet high!).

  More than sixty lots of gambling and arcade machines, mainly from a
  Belgian collection.

  Various lots of phonographs and cylinders.

  Literature about mechanical music, automata, and phonographs.

Thanks to Joyce Brite and Jody Kravitz, the auction catalogue should be
posted in the next few days at: http://mmd.foxtail.com/Auctions/  The
complete results of the auction will be posted there too later.
Catalogues of previous auctions since December 1998 are also archived on
the MMD website.

All inquiries (including requests for the printed catalogue in French)
should be directed to the auction house:

  Galerie de Chartres
  10, rue Claude Bernard - ZA du Coudray BP 70129 - 28003 Chartres Cedex
  Tel.* +33 (0) 2 37 88 28 28
  Fax* + 33 (0) 2 37 88 28 20
  E-mail: chartres@galeriedechartres.com
  (* Do not dial the first (0) if you are outside France).

With best regards,
Philippe Rouille,
Paris, France
http://www.musicamecanica.org