Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

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SonnyPhono
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Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by SonnyPhono »

After starting the thread regarding brown wax record slips, I decided to start one for brown wax boxes as well. In the group of Columbia cylinders I recently bought, there are three variations, two of which I haven't seen before and don't know anything about. The first variation is the common box with the picture of "Lady Liberty" or "Miss Columbia", (not sure of the correct nomenclature) standing next to a Graphophone that is spelled "Graphaphone".
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The other two Columbia boxes are two that I haven't seen before. They are almost identical with the exception that one has 6 cities listed on the label and the other has 7. Both show a smaller depiction of "Lady Liberty" and have a blue background throughout. Here is the one that lists 6 cities:
IMG_0165.JPG
This last one has Paris listed as the 7th location shown centered under the "Lady Liberty" logo. I am assuming this one was produced a bit later than the one with 6 locations listed. This is merely conjecture, however, as I would imagine they would add the new locations to the labels as the company grew.
IMG_0171.JPG
Aside from "Paris" being added, they are the same. Here are a couple pictures of
the other side of the labels.
IMG_0166.JPG
IMG_0167.JPG
Does anyone have any information on the last two boxes pictured? I wasn't able to find much information on them and I'm curious if they are early boxes in Columbia's commercial recording history. Again, any info is greatly appreciated. I would like to see other early boxes/labels if anyone would be willing to post some pictures.

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by phonogfp »

SonnyPhono wrote: Does anyone have any information on the last two boxes pictured? I wasn't able to find much information on them and I'm curious if they are early boxes in Columbia's commercial recording history.
The box label showing Columbia holding a shield and listing 6 cities is the earliest label used by Columbia, and likely dates from mid 1897. The addition of Paris on the label probably dates from late 1897.

George P.
Last edited by phonogfp on Sat Feb 25, 2012 5:38 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by HisMastersVoice »

I see that Columbia had a Paris location at 34 Boulevard des Italiens. I have a few of these coins from the Pathé “Salon du Phonographe” which was right down the street at 30 Boulevard des Italiens. I think it’s an Italian restaurant now. With all of the cafés and phonograph places in the area, I bet it was a great place to spend the day!

Also, just so I'm not completely off-topic, I think I have a few brown wax boxes at home that I'll post later.
pathe-coin.jpg
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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

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phonogfp wrote: The box label showing Columbia holding a shield and listing 6 cities is the earliest label used by Columbia, and likely dates from late 1897/mid 1898. The addition of Paris on the label probably dates from late 1898.

George P.
Thanks for confirming the time frame, George. I have a few more questions about this group of cylinders. There are a couple dozen or so boxes that don't have labels and are just plain cardboard. (Pasteboard?) At first I thought maybe the labels had deteriorated over time, but after looking closer, I'm not sure if that's the case. Here are a couple boxes that DO have deteriorated labels:
IMG_0179.JPG
The plain boxes in question show no signs of ever having a label on them at all. They are uniform in color and have no signs of adhesive or other label remnants.
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They are also a bit shorter than the others that have labels.
IMG_0183.JPG
Are these boxes just missing their labels or are they from a different company? Did Columbia ever use plain boxes before introducing the first label? Here is why I ask. There are 75 cylinders in the group and every one of them with the exception of just a couple, have been sewn around the rims to secure the original cotton batting to the inside of the boxes.
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Also, the boxes were sewn to each other to form a rigid "honeycomb" shape. Here, I am holding one of the clusters:
IMG_0143.jpg
They were all meticulously sewn like this.
IMG_0184.JPG
Considering there are early labels and plain boxes mixed together in these clusters, I would assume the plain boxes never had labels to begin with. All of the boxes with labels, (50 or so) are Columbia. Could the plain boxes be what Columbia used just prior to introducing the first style label? Has anyone else come across this sort of thing regarding boxes being sewn together?

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by phonogfp »

I've never seen boxes sewn together like that. I guess the original owner didn't want to waste money on a carrying case!

As for the plain boxes, yes - - these were used (by all companies I believe) prior to the appearance of box labels.

George P.

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by Starkton »

SonnyPhono wrote: Does anyone have any information on the last two boxes pictured?
The box listing 6 cities came in use after Columbia's head office moved from Washington D.C. to New York in late 1896. Paris was added only a few months later when the new shop at 34, Boulevard des Italiens was opened in about March 1897.

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by SonnyPhono »

phonogfp wrote:I've never seen boxes sewn together like that. I guess the original owner didn't want to waste money on a carrying case!

As for the plain boxes, yes - - these were used (by all companies I believe) prior to the appearance of box labels.

George P.
They are definitely sewn together well enough that one wouldn't need a carrying case! But it looks like they were adhered somehow to the bottom of a drawer or maybe a homemade carrying box of some sort. Here is a picture of the bottom of one of the groups.
IMG_0187.JPG
I'd love to know where these were purchased. Maybe I can find out more when I get a proper reproducer to play them. Would the announcements of the cylinders in the plain boxes have a company name mentioned?

Starkton, thanks for the info. I would assume the boxes with 6 cities don't show up nearly as often as the other two later variations being that they were only used for a few months.

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by phonogfp »

Starkton wrote: The box listing 6 cities came in use after Columbia's head office moved from Washington D.C. to New York in late 1896. Paris was added only a few months later when the new shop at 34, Boulevard des Italiens was opened in about March 1897.
Thanks, Starkton, for correcting the inaccurate dates I cited. I have edited my earlier post so as not to confuse.

I could have sworn that the Paris office hadn't opened until 1898, but the 1899 Annual Report of the American Graphophone Company spelled it out on page 8:

"...in 1895 a sales depot was opened in New York, at first in very modest quarters, afterward in the strikingly conspicuous and attractive establishments uptown at Twenty-seventh street and Broadway, and downtown at the corner of Broadway and Liberty street. In 1896 we opened on a similar scale in St. Louis; in 1897 in Philadelphia, Chicago, Paris, and Buffalo in rapid succession, and in 1898 in San Francisco. In 1899 the doors of the Berlin office were thrown open."

This suggests a question. If the Paris office was opened in early 1897, why did the lid decals of Graphophones (such as the B - introduced in September 1897) not list any other offices besides New York for at least 2 years? I wonder if the cylinder box labels were similarly behind-the-times?
SonnyPhono wrote:
I'd love to know where these were purchased. Maybe I can find out more when I get a proper reproducer to play them. Would the announcements of the cylinders in the plain boxes have a company name mentioned?
The cylinder announcements on Columbia records have nothing to do with where they were purchased. A retailer would have to add that sort of thing, and I've never heard of such a practice. A paper label with the retailer's name would be more likely - although not often done.

As for the announcements on the cylinders in plain boxes, it would depend on whether Columbia made the recording in its own studios or bought them from another supplier. The plain box would have been used by either party before Columbia introduced its box label. And of course, who's to say if each cylinder is now in the original box it was sold in?

It would be interesting to research the song titles to discover when they were introduced, and possibly shed some light on when those Columbia box labels were put into circulation.

By the way, is the inner spiral the same on all these cylinders?

George P.
Last edited by phonogfp on Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by edisonphonoworks »

I love this post of Columbia Brown Wax, I think previous to 1897 most companies supplied record tickets, and by 1898 boxes had label art. It was in 1897 that Columbia made it's own blanks, and all of your blanks look like Columbia made blanks. Previous to 1895 Edison blanks were used even for Columbia records. For a time in 1895 through 1896 Columbia blanks were made with broken Edison wax obtained from The United States Phonograph Company. Columbia did make some experimental wax from 1894 to 1896, but I am not sure if many survive, it was defective from the get go.

I thank Starkton and Mr. Paul for the history of the boxes, as I have focused so much on just the blanks and formulations, and molding and recording technique, I am only 38 so I have much to learn about the rest of it. I really enjoyed the photographs of the cylinders, you can see that the Columbia blank has a course , single spiral core while an Edison has a double start core. I get excited about brown wax cylinders having duplicated many of these experiments. I noticed a slight fogging on the inside of some of your records, when all "wax " cylinders were new, a small amount of fog was present, and even sometimes if a cylinder has not been played for a long time, they still have it on top. If the surface becomes riddled with an oily thick film there is a problem with a more raw kind of stearic. It is the glycerine and some olaic acid that comes to the top. I at onetime owned a set of about 50 pre 1901 Columbia brown wax records. No matter what the quality of there blanks , (I do not think they matched the quality of an Edison blank.) Columbia hired some fantastic talent, and I enjoyed for the 3 months I owned these records, which came in two beautiful mo hare lined, mahogany cylinder storage suitcases, I transcibed the Columbia records. The many Dan W Quinn records such as SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK, MY PERLE IS A BOWERY GIRL, MR. CAPTAIN STOP THE SHIP,A PIECE OF STRING AROUND HER NECK, CHIN CHIN CHINA MAN, MIGGINTY AT TH LIVING PICTURES, BEWARE OF THE GIRL WITH THE DOWN CAST EYE. The was some Sousa band record, Gilmore's band Columbia Orchestra, one Edward M Favor, and a Steve Porter selection. I hope you can transcribe these sometime the selections at this time, were always interesting. I notice that the brown wax era, that vocal selections are usually vocal with Piano, and orchestra selections are just that, it seems that somewhere around 1901 or so that bands started to accompany singers. Am I near correct on this?? It seems though that some of the early sub companies of North American actually did have some bands with vocals, and then for a time later they did not do this. It is interesting to see how out of round the interior of the cylinders must have been before they were seasoned, notice that one of the cylinders has a big line on one side and the spiral deeper on the other. I would like a question from more of you who won brown wax, it seems Edison brown wax blanks have a more fine double spiral core, while Columbia blanks have a more coarse, single spiral core, can any of you who have lots of brown wax compare this for me. I only have 6 original brown wax records in my collection at this time, and they are all Edison blanks. My curiosity runs, I am sure more strange than all of you, about the small technical details of the blanks.

Sincerely Shawn Borri. Who seems to tries to pry open the mysteries of brown wax production.

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Re: Brown Wax Cylinder Boxes

Post by SonnyPhono »

phonogfp wrote:"...in 1895 a sales depot was opened in New York, at first in very modest quarters, afterward in the strikingly conspicuous and attractive establishments uptown at Twenty-seventh street and Broadway, and downtown at the corner of Broadway and Liberty street. In 1896 we opened on a similar scale in St. Louis; in 1897 in Philadelphia, Chicago, Paris, and Buffalo in rapid succession, and in 1898 in San Francisco. In 1899 the doors of the Berlin office were thrown open."

This suggests a question. If the Paris office was opened in early 1897, why did the lid decals of Graphophones (such as the B - introduced in September 1897) not list any other offices besides New York for at least 2 years? I wonder if the cylinder box labels were similarly behind-the-times?
Great question. I would think that adding the location of a new office to a label would be an easy process and assumed these additions were added with little delay. But you bring up a good point regarding the lid labels so maybe the addition of an office location on a box label isn't too accurate to gauge the date of production.
phonogfp wrote:The cylinder announcements on Columbia records have nothing to do with where they were purchased. A retailer would have to add that sort of thing, and I've never heard of such a practice. A paper label with the retailer's name would be more likely - although not often done.
I apologize for not being very clear when mentioning the announcements. I was referring to the announcements on the cylinders in the plain boxes. Weren't there companies that produced and sold their own cylinders as well as Columbia cylinders? I recall reading something about The Kansas City Talking Machine Co. or possibly some other company that manufactured their own cylinders with the announcement stating their company name. The same company also advertised that they sold Columbia cylinders if I remember correctly. (I will try to find where I read that for validation purposes because I may be way off here.) If a smaller company recorded and sold their own cylinders, possibly issuing them in plain boxes, and also sold cylinders for Columbia, it would be feasible that the announcements of the cylinders in the plain boxes might mention that company. That's what I was referring to when I mentioned the announcement maybe having some information to help pinpoint where they were purchased. Sorry for the confusion. : )

phonogfp wrote:It would be interesting to research the song titles to discover when they were introduced, and possibly shed some light on when those Columbia box labels were put into circulation.
That's a good idea. I will work on putting together a spreadsheet of titles, artists and label styles and will post it when finished.
phonogfp wrote:By the way, is the inner spiral the same on all these cylinders?
I haven't looked too closely at the inner spirals yet. I will check them all as I make the spreadsheet and will be sure to include those details as well. Thanks again for all of the helpful information!

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