Musical Instruments & Memorabilia

François Nicole (b.1766), the Geneva-based pioneer of the key-wind musical box, is thought to have made around 440 boxes during his working life, but only around 60 are known today.

Top names in their different fields, ages and markets, Wurlitzer and Armand Marseilles were the star makers at Hartleys (17.5% buyer’s premium).

Bought in 1952 by a semi-pro Skegness musician who played with East Coast seaside entertainers, this steel string guitar got a big show of hands at Louth auction house John Taylors (18% buyer’s premium).

Emile Berliner (1851-1921), a German clerk in a Washington DC haberdashery, is credited with inventing both the first commercially successful disc record and the first machine to play it.

A classic ‘barn find’ piece, this somewhat dilapidated jukebox was spotted as a potential golden oldie at Gardiner Houlgate (22% buyer’s premium).

Only a handful of companies have created products with sufficient impact that their brand names become generic descriptions for objects of their type.

What auctioneer Michael Callan called “a modest mid terrace town house in Irvine, Ayrshire” was the source of one of the star lots of a recent Thomas R Callan (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Ayr.

The Royal Academy of Music has said it has no plans to sell or dispose of any of its historic instruments after national media reported it was looking into ‘decolonialising’ its collection.

Distinctive bureau cabinet form could have been intended for presentation to the guild.

John Gresham was a third-generation member of a wealthy Hull timber-importing family.

The West as well as the East made a major contribution to the success of Gorringe’s £1m sale on March 30 where, overall, 86% of the 593 lots sold.

In 1935, Swiss designer Paul Fuller, who had emigrated to the US after the First World War, joined the Rudolf Wurlitzer Company as their chief designer.

Collector’s daughter describes what it was like to grow up amid huge musical machines

Young cricket player stars among the varied lots from estate of journalist and author

Mechanical music will be going under the hammer on March 20 as part of the Miller & Miller auction in New Hamburg, Ontario.

Though a Bösendorfer grand piano topped bidding at $42,500 (£31,250) in a January 16 sale, the main attractions for many came from a different source.

Lacking the glitter of a former rock star owner, this Fender Stratocaster sold on the traditional antiques virtues of quality, age and condition.

In playing condition but with enough problems to be catalogued as ‘sold as seen’, a Nicole Frères brass inlaid music box was one of the unexpected stars of the first three-day sale to be held at Ripon auction house Elstob & Elstob (22% buyer’s premium).