Mechanical Music

Overview

Mechanical music comes in many forms, from a cylinder musical box to a singing bird.

Produced as high class means of entertainment, the quality of some of the best pieces is truly spectacular. We have been lucky enough to sell a Nicole Freres interchangeable cylinder box with drawer containing three extra cylinders, meaning the machine has 24 tunes available - Nicole Freres were a good quality maker and retailer of all types of music box.

The next level of versatility comes with a disc box, playing anything up to a 27 inch diameter disc, some even containing an autochange mechanism, more akin to a modern jukebox.

Value is not always proportional to size, indeed some small snuff boxes, only around 15cm in length are of very fine quality and can be exceedingly valuable.

Organs come in many forms including paper roll and barrel organs, often produced for public spaces such as a church, again ranging from a tabletop example to a large fairground organ inside a lorry.