Unusual Edison W250

[OrthoSean]

I'll try to get some photos and the serial number of my W-250 later. When I say the machine is in storage, it's BURIED behind a dozen other large floor models and it has a Victor V on top of it, so I'll have to spelunk a bit

Incidentally, just about a year ago, I picked up a basement fresh A-150 with a super nice Oxidized Bronze finish that I hope to start cleaning up this Summer....well maybe...

Sean

[phonogal]

It would be interesting to know when the gun metal finish replaced the gold finish.

I'm not certain that the "Antique" finish -- as it was called in Edison propaganda (not gun-metal, that seems to be a modern term) -- ever completely replaced the gold plated finish with the Official Laboratory Models.

I don't believe it did specifically in regard to the Chippendale Upright. I've documented some very late C 19s with both Antique, and Gold finishes.

Toward the end of production it seems the co. was using whatever they could find in inventory to fill orders.

It seems that you, Sean, and Bruce all have a variant finish I hadn't previously noted.

That surprises me a little, but then I haven't examined the W&M as intently as I have the Chippendale.

Would you say the burnished places on your horn is copper-like, and an exact match to the places exposed on your reproducer, or a different underlying color?

Best,
Fran

Fran, I would say the burnished places on all of it including the reproducer are all the same. They are more a brassy bronze color than a copper color.

[fran604g]

Fran, I would say the burnished places on all of it including the reproducer are all the same. They are more a brassy bronze color than a copper color.

That's interesting in and of itself. Bruce's example looks more copper-like to me. Hopefully more like these will surface.

Best,
Fran

[Curt A]

One other thought... The original oxidized finishes were done by copper plating the part, antiquing the copper and then burnishing the antiqued finish to let the copper show through.

Some oxidized brass parts may have lost that oxidized finish over time and may have been buffed to a shiny brass appearance sometime in the past. Then, in an effort to restore the original look, someone may have applied an antiquing solution and removed portions (while skipping the copper plating step), which results in a brassy subsurface showing through. The reason that I believe this may be the case, is talking with older collectors and discovering methods they used to try to replicate the finish. For example, I have heard stories of people painting the parts dark and then using copper paint to make it look oxidized, using Rub and Buff over the top of worn finishes, brushing vaseline on areas before applying an antiquing solution and other home remedy methods, since the original method requires copper plating, which is beyond the norm for most collectors doing a restoration...

[Mechtronix]

Hi from Australia, here are some pictures of my W250 which is exactly like Phonogal's. Patchy oxidised brassy color. I don't have the original reproducer on it. It has a later Antique finish Dance reproducer on it at present. Serial number 2495. Craig

[fran604g]

The plot thickens!

[phonogal]

Hi from Australia, here are some pictures of my W250 which is exactly like Phonogal's. Patchy oxidised brassy color. I don't have the original reproducer on it. It has a later Antique finish Dance reproducer on it at present. Serial number 2495. Craig

Thank you for posting these. Hope others that have one like this will post

[phonogal]

The plot thickens!

Yes. Interesting!

[PeterF]

I think this is way simpler than some of us want it to be.

The "blackened-metal with orange highlights" finish we see on the Victor R, some Amberola I examples, and some A-150s, is created by partially buffing away a metal surface darkened by a chemical oxidation process to reveal and brighten the copper underneath, to create a decorative effect. It was done to varying levels of detail depending upon the desired effect and the whim/skills of the worker doing the buffing. Frow and some Edison literature call this finish "oxidized bronze" but there is no standardized name for it.

I'm a little OCD on that particular finish. As a bit of a side hobby, I've collected and retrofitted our 1912 house with much hardware and many accessories in this finish: switch plates, heat registers, lighting fixtures, kick plates, doorstops, doorknobs and locksets, push plates, hinges, cabinet latches, drawer pulls, window hardware, and even a doorbell. Plenty of it has been new old stock in original packaging, so I can say there are plenty of names used to label items with the finish, like:

- Antique Copper
- Antique Copper Plated
- Old Fashioned
- Oxidized Copper
- Antiqued Finish
- Coppery-Doppery-Doo

Well, maybe I made that last one up. And you see it called lots of other things today on eBay and elsewhere, like copper flash and flashed copper and tiger copper - and the completely erroneous japanned. And none of my NOS packaging has ever called it "oxidized bronze."

This finish was most popular before 1920, and there may be a link to its decline if we consider copper as a strategic material during WWI, but that's speculation on my part. Let's call it the "Early" finish.

So what was next? The regular nickel and gold finishes of course persisted on the DD machines, and then in the early 20s and continuing into the Edison radio/phonograph era, a new finish emerged, with a silky silvery grey metal base and yellowish highlights. Most of the yellowy highlights are consistent in their pattern, usually longitudinal fat stripes on the horn neck and reproducer stem, and roughly symmetrical bands on the edges of the reproducer shell and weight - as seen in some of the earlier pictures in this thread. They are not complex or ornate like the curlicues or circles sometimes found with the Early finish. Let's call this one the "Later" finish.

How did they create the effect of the Later finish? It's really hard to say, at least not without diving into the Edison archives. I've never seen it anywhere, except specifically on Edison diamond disc and radio/phonograph phono hardware. It's a handsome look and I'd imagine the public appreciated it for its uniqueness. It isn't plated, it isn't applied...so I'm going to propose it's a similar process to the Early, just more subtle and consistent. And that means chemical or electrochemical alteration of the surface (we can likely assume the term oxidation applies here too) with manual modification to bring up the highlights.

So let's say those same workers who had done Early a few years before were now set to doing Later finishes on the new hardware. But maybe the buffing didn't work to the same fineness of line, so they went to the "rounded/squared blotches" look of the two early W-250s shown earlier in this thread (I have several non-phono pieces at home with the same sort of pattern, but done in the Early finish). Or maybe the design people just recognized that styles had changed and the highlights needed to become...subtle and consistent.

I think the serial numbers (and the Duncan Stops and W-250 rather than W-19 tagging) are the key. Both are thus very early examples of the Later finish, and are therefore simply evidence of the factory feeling its way to a final configuration. In my opinion they are definitely factory original finishes, and as such, interesting early variants.

If/when the third early W-250 example is unburied, we may know more, but I think we already have the answer.

[OrthoSean]

I finally dared to go and dig out my W-250 enough to take a couple of photos, complete with dust!

Sean