Jeffries Concertina With Ivory Buttons

[black velvet]

I have at present an unrestored charles jeffries concertina in its origional leather&velvet case, but all the pictures of other jeffries concertinas that i have been able to find have metal buttons not ivory. if anyone can shed some light on this then please give me a shout,

if i'm not on the message board for a while then i can be reached at emmamurfin@aol.com as i've had a lot of trouble with a scamster who re-directs my internet dialer.

thanks

em (Black Velvet Irish music)

[Daniel Bradbury]

Jefferies with bone buttons are not uncommon. I'm not sure whether many were made with ivory buttons. I'm sure others who know more about this will fill us in.

[Stephen Chambers]

It is my impression that ivory buttons were only used on the older models of Jeffries, made by Charles Jeffries senior from about the 1870's up to about 1890, though there was probably some overlap with the use of metal buttons.

 

The ivory buttons make the instrument lighter in weight, and they tend to have mahogany, rather than maple, woodwork internally, resulting in a drier tone than other Jeffries.

 

I have never seen bone buttons on a Jeffries.

[Daniel Bradbury]

My mistake, thanks Stephen for the correction.

 

I was told somewhere along the line that there were bone buttons on early Jefferies.

[Stephen Chambers]

I was told somewhere along the line that there were bone buttons on early Jefferies.

I think most people use "bone" or "ivory" quite loosely, and can't really tell the difference. Ivory is very smooth in texture, while bone is coarser and more grainy (you will see black flecks in it).

 

Though Jeffries always used ivory, virtually all Lachenal anglos have bone buttons (until they changed to the plastic Erinoid in the mid 1920's), an exception being a rare ebony-ended one that I recently bought (off eBay) that has ivory buttons. (And very handsome they look too, against the ebony.)