Here is a selection of rare Parlophone records, made in Australia, and featuring Maori songs and artists. There are five double sided records, four in very good condition and one with a surface crack on one side, but still playable, Some are pictured here. Let me know if they are of interest.
Here is a real rarity, the French made “Gypsy” gramophone, almost certainly the smallest gramophone made in that country. It is in a solid leather case measuring only 16 x 8 x 7 cm, and with a folding fabric horn, very like the slightly larger “Mignonphone”, which also claims to be French made, but may […]
Here is a really early gramophone from the very beginning of recorded sound, possibly the very first commercially available music machine from “The Gramophone Company”. In the book “His Master’s Gramophone” by Proudfoot and Oakley it is referred to as the “Style No.2” from 1900, however, an accompaning photograph from the original owner dates it […]
This is a very early “portable” gramophone from about 1912. Although Decca gramophones had the reputation of being the first genuine portables, there were a few earlier ones and the “Alfresco” appears to be one of them. Christopher Proudfoot refers to the gramophone in Edition 29 of the “For the Record” magazine. The magazine of […]
This is a nice example of one of the many tin-plate toy gramophones produced in Germany in the early 1920s. probably the best known name is “Bing” from, I believe, the Bingwerke Company but this is a “Nirona” gramophone and a company that is noted for the distinctive shell-shaped horn. Although these toy gramophones do […]
This is a mystery gramophone made in the form of a “Cameraphone” and is rather like the more usual examples like the “Peter Pan” versions and the “Cameraphone” models themselves. The logo one the inside of the lid says “Eclipse Gramophone Company, 116 Putney Bridge Road, SW.” but I can find no reference to this […]
Collectors will be familiar with early wind-up gramophones which play, in general, 78 rpm discs. Some will have found the earlier phonographs that were developed, if not invented, by Thomas Edison and these play cylinder records. Originally cylinder machines were the first to be available to play recorded music and voices, but cylinders were difficult […]
This is an interesting and particularly attractive portable gramophone known as the “Folding Apollo” from 1921, (Proudfoot’s book, Collecting Phonographs and Gramophones) and made in a teak case. Like some of the early Decca models this gramophone uses the idea of reflecting the sound from a short tone arm against the back of the machine […]
Many small gramophones are referred to as cameraphones as they look rather like the Box-Browie cameras in use at the time, however this is actually a “Cameraphone”. It has a spider turntable and the resonator is a hollow globe shape made of simulated tortoiseshell.