Gift from Mr. Mei, who traded it off with Mr. Piet Visser, here is an american or a german tin flute from the 1920s. The red painting has been restaured by Mr. Visser, as it was originally.
Besides its color, the other particularity of this flute is its square mouth shield, leading to a very typical design, and to a look misleadingly tinier than the tin Humanatone. Following the same "shape spirit", the two wings of the "nose fender" show the same kind of cutting, comparing to the round endings of a Humanatone.
The "technical parts" are quite the same as the Humanatone, and the red flute has a lip rest, as almost all its contemporaries.
It is stamped with no brand or patent numbers, which is singular since the model uses all prior inventions, but it is yet possible that fine stampings have disappeared with time, rust, gentle sanding and red paint coating.
Thanks to Piet Visser, who was kind enough to let this early nose flute go...!
ReplyDeleteI just love these old authentic models! To me, there's nothing quite like such historic instruments, for they could never be replaced! I think it's great to have 2 different versions from the same era compared to each other.
Could the painted red nose flute be an illegal spin-off of the tin Humanatone? Could the idiosyncratic shapes and the striking colour of the red one be simply a way of standing out, a way of selling it?
You know, all the tin model of this period are more or less legal spin-offs of the Humanatone. Anyway, the Humanatone design itself laid on several patents (but Stivers paid to use them). I mean : there were no specific patent for the Humanatone itself, until the 40s plastic models.
ReplyDeleteThe Magic Flute, the Humanaphone, the Humanophone, the Vociphone - for the ones which had names - and the german or french ones, all were rather similar to the Humanatone.