Dear Matti,  I saw your very nice post to the MMD about your family
Brémond music box, and enjoyed the accompanying photographs.  I wish
to correct you on one aspect, however.

Contrary to what you were led to believe, in fact, I repinned your
cylinder here in my music box restoration shop in Georgia.  No
cylinders have _ever_ been repinned by or in the Musical Wonder House
in Wiscasset, Maine.  For the past 25 years, I have done _all_ their
cylinder repinning restorations for them, as they were never set up
for, nor had the knowledge, technique or special materials, to do
cylinder repinning.

For various reasons, they often claimed the restoration work was done
in-house on the premises, but that was not so, at least insofar as
cylinder repinning jobs were concerned.  In years prior to my repinning
work, they used to ship customers' cylinders overseas to Switzerland
for repinning.

My records indicate that up to the closure of the museum, and your
cylinder's completion, I repinned 439 cylinders for the Musical Wonder
House, many for music boxes in their collection, and all of their
customers' restorations which required repinning.  In fact, I also
did many other facets of restoration work for them over the years,
including case repairs and restorations, making and fitting missing
parts, etc.

The cylinder to your Brémond was, in fact, the _final_ restoration
I did -- forever -- for the now closed Musical Wonder House.  My
records indicate pinning was completed on December 12, 2013, and
the cylinder was shipped back to Paulo at the Musical Wonder House
the following day, Friday the 13th.

As for your case restoration, Giordano and Cathy Grazzini at
Florentine Antique Restoration [Ridgefield, Connecticut] are,
in my opinion, absolutely without peer in this type of work,
particularly the _correct_ restoration of Swiss music box cases.
Yours is beautiful indeed!

Reg Smith - Antique Music Box Restorations
Dahlonega, Georgia
musicboxrestoration@gmail.com.geentroep [delete ".geentroep" to reply]