Bellow papers for a MacCann Lachenal

[Redlaneham]

I have a beautiful rosewood ended MacCann Duet with metal buttons. It has the reed trademark imprinted on the hand strap bar together with trade mark, so I am pretty confident it is a Lachenal. Its number is 3696. It needs new bellows and there’s no papers on the existing (they have been stripped). Would it have had standard patterned Lachenal papers or something more fancy? The fretwork is very fancy and fine for a 39 button MacCann so I think it would have deserved something special. Any suggestionsd gratefully received.

[wschruba]

Do your bellows have gold tooling on them?  My metal-ended instrument with the same fretting has gold tooling with green+gold filigree papers.  

[Redlaneham]

7 hours ago, wschruba said:

Do your bellows have gold tooling on them?  My metal-ended instrument with the same fretting has gold tooling with green+gold filigree papers.  

No tooling. Would have been good. Bellows are really worn so new bellows needed and as I said the papers had been stripped off. Any chance of a photo of yours?

[wschruba]

 

You can see the gold tooling at the bottom here.  My bellows had a few small leaks that needed fixing, but not bad for a 100+ year old instrument. 

 

I did make attempts to use archival-safe solutions to clean the papers (probably tobacco smoke?), but it wouldn't come out.  I figured that originality of the parts was more important than "clean".

[Redlaneham]

3 hours ago, wschruba said:

 

You can see the gold tooling at the bottom here.  My bellows had a few small leaks that needed fixing, but not bad for a 100+ year old instrument. 

 

I did make attempts to use archival-safe solutions to clean the papers (probably tobacco smoke?), but it wouldn't come out.  I figured that originality of the parts was more important than "clean".

Thanks for the pic. I will put some more photos on when mine is restored. I think you are right that the original papers are important.