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That's neat!OrthoSean wrote:And I just noticed something pretty cool, my W-250 and Phongal's are just 10 numbers apart, that's pretty cool!
Sean
Thank Sean. Looks just like mine.OrthoSean wrote:And I just noticed something pretty cool, my W-250 and Phongal's are just 10 numbers apart, that's pretty cool!
Sean
A chicken by any other name is still a bird?PeterF wrote: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.
Absolutely. I'll pay better attention to the W&M through my ongoing Chippendale research as well. I'm sure there will be seen parallels in regard to production trends that could help us deduce certain facts.phonogal wrote:It would help us figure it out if we knew there were other W250 out there between the serial numbers of these 4 with a different finish on them. Looks like we may need a few more examples.
Certainly, although I don't know how much of my questionnaire might be relevant to the William and Mary. As time progressed, my surveyed features increased dramatically. I also expanded my study to include the mechanism, somewhat in-depth, for other works. I'd begin with features that are present on your W-250, and perhaps concentrate on features that are easily observed, or obvious -- that could give you at least a place to start your questionnaire. Just my $.02, I don't mean to try and steer you in a direction you aren't happy doing.phonogal wrote:Not sure how to do that on the forum. Could I use your C250 example? I can keep a data sheet.
