10 M Ad from 1947
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It's a wonder any of our grandparents lived past 50 with all the air and water pollution and workplace risks.
Well, a whole lot of them didn't.
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I love seeing old instrument ads & looking through old copies of Down Beat & similar rags. Lots of interesting tidbits to be gleaned, and just generally fascinating snapshots of the whole music biz in that day, not just the big names that are remembered.
Heh. My Grandfather told my Aunt, about his late '70s, that he was pretty bored of playing golf & that neither he nor his peers (who were mostly still alive) had actually expected to live that long, at least not in good health. But then he had grown up an orphan during the Depression after his mother died of cancer and his Dad died in a boiler explosion, so he had dire expectations.
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Had a lot of turnover at that spot there...
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"World's Largest Manufacturer of Musical Instruments", was thought to be flattering enough to feature. That would be opposite today, where everyone wants a custom, boutique one-off instrument.
You know, I don't think I've ever seen anyone speculate on it. There are some obvious leaves, and then there are those things that kind of look like a column with a ball on top. I wonder if anyone has ever written about the development of engraving patterns, especially something semi-realistic-stylized like the Conn Lady pattern. Or take the top hat, gloves, and cane with castle design of Buescher. Who drew that up? Who had to approve it? Why a top hat, cane, and folded gloves? What's a castle got to do with it?
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It's art moderne abstraction. You might call it "frozen fountains," which were popular design motifs then. "Then" being 1932, when the design first appeared on silver and satin gold Conns. It was put on nickel and brass horns after 1933 in a simplified version.
Conn first got into modern design in 1930 with the "Deco" or "Jive" engraving, an irregular polygon filled with various geometric doodads. This was complicated and time consuming to execute. Gold instruments in this scheme incorporated the first "Lady in the Pentagon," a small, full-length dancing figure (see my avatar for an example).
Allusion via allusion. The '400' instruments were the new top-of-the-line after 1940, as the Aristocrat line had been before them. Everyone then knew the term "the four hundred" as an allusion to the elite (originally a real list drawn up by Mrs. John Jacob Astor).
The TH&C (and gloves) were the popular badge of society's swells. The castle was a looser symbolism, I think mostly just a pretty scene in visual shorthand. The few gold-plated Aristocrat saxes ever made had a pentagon-type vignette that might contain ships, animals, or other pictures.
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I would hope there was a barrier or lead shield for them. Surely they knew about the effects of x-rays.
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I don't think they did, don't forget the Radium Girls!
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Like the front grille on cars, it was probably the way to tell it was a Conn from 10 feet away.
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I always considered those columns with the ball on top to be an emerging fern frond or (fiddle head) motif. But when I saw this ad and the copy "the fruit of years of experience" it occurred to me that the Conn floral motif could be an apple tree or the garden of Eden and the naked lady could be Eve. Inside a pentagram no less.
More than what the meaning of the stylistic elements is, I wonder how the design got made in the first place, and how it got agreed that this was the design to put on the bell? How much latitude did the head of the engraving department have? Was that the person who designed the patterns? After all, something like the Conn M series or the Buescher THC design, or the Martin "searchlight" or "lion and crown", is a very specific design and it was used, almost identical except for minor variations from being done by hand, for years on end (well, not Martin, they changed models like you and I change or socks, but Buescher and Conn at any rate). It's not like the typical Selmer "put some flowers on the bell".
Did the Conn general manager say "we're releasing a new set of models, we need a new bell engraving" and then have the head of the engraving dept. make up three or four designs and pick one? Was there a committee? Did the decision take half an hour or two years? (I've been working in giant corporations a long time, and nowadays something like that would take 10 focus groups and two years to decide.)
Did the Conn general manager say "we're releasing a new set of models, we need a new bell engraving" and then have the head of the engraving dept. make up three or four designs and pick one? Was there a committee? Did the decision take half an hour or two years? (I've been working in giant corporations a long time, and nowadays something like that would take 10 focus groups and two years to decide.)
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Although there are plenty of books about Art Deco, I don't don't know of any book or work describing engraving art on saxophones or other instruments. It's an interesting and enjoyable enough subject that I'd definitely be interested, though.
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Great questions..... Do you know when Conn started engraving the bells?
Did engraving from year to year change, and is it the same pattern on the alto as the tenor?
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