Exportation vs Exhibition Reproducers

[Lenoirstreetguy]

Coincidental that this topic should arise just after I ran onto this Exhibition copy in a reprint of the Rena Catalogue from 1909 . Here it is . The Columbia sound box copy was supposedly under license and I expect it was . Lewis Sterling was involved with Rena and he had strong Columbia affiliations, but I doubt of that applied to the Victor/Gramophone Co. copy. The Manufacturing was done in Germany. A gent named H M Rodkinson,,,late of The Gramophone Co in Hanover was one of the main pushes in Rena and an associate of Sterling's. The Rena machines... which were gorgeous...were only on the market a short time before Rena became essentially Columbia in the UK and the machine factory went on to other associations.

Jim