Shakespeare 38 Key Anglo

[Mike C]

Hi all

 

I recently got hold of a Shakespeare 38 key anglo, and would like to find out a few snippets of it's history - when it was made, etc - and that of the maker in general. I've already read the small amount that's available on this site about Shakespeare, and it seems that very little is known, so I'm not having high hopes here but you never know!

 

I say it's a Shakespeare, but as there is no makers mark on it anywhere, I only have the word of the dealer from whom I bought it that that's what it is. It's certainly very Jeffries in appearance, so I'm intrigued as to why this is (OK it doesn't play quite like a Jeffries, but then it didn't cost anything like one either!). I know of the links between Jeffries and Crabb, but was there any sort of connection here I wonder?

 

The Vickers catalogue of 1935 does list a Shakespeare of a very similar description, so it could well be from that period.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Mike

[Lawrence Reeves]

Sure does look a lot like mine on the inside. Fretwork is different. Mine does have a maker's stamp on the fretwork saying

T Shakespeare Maker 110 Oakley Street. Also initials TS into the fretwork.

[Stephen Chambers]

I recently got hold of a Shakespeare 38 key anglo, and would like to find out a few snippets of it's history - when it was made, etc - and that of the maker in general. I've already read the small amount that's available on this site about Shakespeare, and it seems that very little is known, so I'm not having high hopes here but you never know!

There's certainly more work to be done on Thomas Shakespeare, but he seems to have been a shadowy figure who didn't appear in music trade directories and suchlike sources, nor did he have a telephone, whilst only a minority of his instruments bear any "signature", and even then it would usually be only his initials.

 

Presumably you've already seen this thread, and this one then?

 

I say it's a Shakespeare, but as there is no makers mark on it anywhere, I only have the word of the dealer from whom I bought it that that's what it is.

I'd say that it was a very typical Shakespeare Anglo, most of them are of that model.

 

It's certainly very Jeffries in appearance, so I'm intrigued as to why this is (OK it doesn't play quite like a Jeffries, but then it didn't cost anything like one either!).

The style probably originated with John Crabb, and was popularised by the instruments he built for Jeffries, so other makers copied it.

 

I know of the links between Jeffries and Crabb, but was there any sort of connection here I wonder?

Although he was largely "following the same plan", the workmanship is quite different. The only detail in common would be on Lawrence's instrument, in the cast "drawer pulls" used for the rails (or "handles"), which are of a design that was also used by Crabb's - in fact I think Geoff Crabb may still have some of them? (Or was it Neville who told me that they still had some?)

 

The Vickers catalogue of 1935 does list a Shakespeare of a very similar description, so it could well be from that period.

I presume you mean the one that's reproduced on the Concertina.com site; www.concertina.com/pricelists/dealers/Vickers-Pricelist-c1935? In which case, Wes Williams has said that;

 

... I think [it] is near the mid 1920s rather than the mid 1930s ascribed to it.

Whilst my own rooting through telephone directories has revealed that the old "Greenwich 289" telephone number on that price list was changed, first by adding a zero to the old 3-digit number (and two zeros to a 2-digit number) in the April 1926 London telephone directory, and then giving it a dialling prefix of "GRE" for the exchange in the October edition, so that it became listed as "GREenwch 0289" (i.e. you dialled "473-0289"). Both of these steps were in preparation for the introduction of the first Director System telephone exchanges later that year, which were to make it possible to dial other exchanges yourself instead of having to go through the operator.

 

So presumably, "early 1926" seems to be the last likely date for that Vickers catalogue, rather than 1935 - by which time Lachenal's had already gone out of business anyway, so new instruments from them would have no longer been available.

Edited June 24, 2008 by Stephen Chambers

[Mike C]

Thanks Stephen for giving me the benefit of your mighty knowledge. That's interesting about the supposed date of the Vickers catalogue - at least it gives me as close a date as I'm probably going to get.

 

By the way, I love the bird motif's in the fretwork Lawrence's model!

 

All the best Mike