Anyone recognise this one?

[Takayuki YAGI]

3 hours ago, Stephen Chambers said:

 

They seem to have used a better grade of bone, that wasn't rough and pitted, on ones like this.

Is there any possibility of Erinoid?

[Stephen Chambers]

12 hours ago, Takayuki YAGI said:

Is there any possibility of Erinoid?

 

Erinoid (a casein plastic material) only started to be used by Lachenal's in the late 1920s, and those buttons had pronounced doming to the tips of them. 

 

They're good quality bone buttons, not like the cheap poorly-turned ones on the less-expensive models of Lachenal.

 

[david robertson]

OK, we have a serial number stamped in the reed pan, and inked on the back of the action box... looks like 2013 (or possibly 6). 

It has a pair of squeakers fitted close to the centre of the left-hand reed pan, so I guess it may also have a whistle on the other end.

It also has significant damage by wood-boring insects, which makes me wonder if it started life as a wooden-ended instrument, converted to metal ends when the fretwork began to wriggle under the player's hands?

 

Edited October 12, 2021 by david robertson

[Stephen Chambers]

53 minutes ago, david robertson said:

OK, we have a serial number stamped in the reed pan, and inked on the back of the action box... looks like 2013 (or possibly 6). 

 

Assuming it is a Lachenal, then 2013 would date it to about 1865. But there appears to be an additional lead digit 2 on the reedpan, making it 22013, and that would date it to about 1873 - which might be more likely for an early metal-ended instrument.

[david robertson]

Whatever the truth of its history, its appeal to the beetles makes it rather less appealing to me. Big flight-holes too! Reminds me of one I once bought from Peru, whose frames consisted of veneer on the outside, a wafer-thin sliver of timber on the inside, and nothing much in between. One particularly industrious grub had chewed an impressively straight line through every fold of the bellows.

If anyone else is brave enough to take this one on, it's in Gorringes sale in Lewes on the 18th of this month.

[John Wild]

I am reminded of the instruction on how to tell if there is a woodworm in a wooden-ended concertina: count the number of holes in the fretwork. If it is an odd number, there is a woodworm in there. If it is an even number, it has left already.😀

[Zak vdV]

Hammer price  £1000. + fees