by Bob Caletti
One day I got a call from someone who wanted to sell a Polyphon music box. It was a 24 ½” upright Mikado-style music box. He sent me pictures and it was a model I had never seen before. We agreed on a price and he delivered it to me. When I saw it in person I realized it was the base of a clock, or something like that, as it had holes in the top of the base for wooden dowel pins to go into and another hole for actuation of the music box. I sent out pictures of what I had to Steve Boehck, Alan Bies, Dave Corkrum, and others in the Musical Box Society International that I thought would know what it was. I also sent a picture to Mark Singleton in England. None of them had seen anything like this one.
A few months later I got a call from Steve, he found a picture of a Polyphon musical hall clock in a book he had on musical clocks written by Arthur Ord-Hume. The base of it looked like the music box I had just purchased. I bought the book that had the picture of the clock in it and now I knew what the rest of it looked like. I contacted Arthur Ord-Hume in England who told me that he had only seen two of this style Polyphon musical hall clock and both were coin operated. The picture in the book had been taken at an auction at Christie’s in the late 1980s. The base I purchased was not coin operated. The person who sold it to me had said that his parents bought it in Germany around 1948 and shipped it to the United States when they came over in 1952. They said that they never had seen a clock with it.
Now I determined that I had enough information from the picture to recreate the clock part of the musical hall clock. I enlarged the picture. Because I had the original base music box which I could measure, I was able to determine a scale factor for the other dimensions.
I worked with a woodworker friend of mine and new MBSI member, John Haugh, to lay out the clock full scale. He was also the one who restored the original bottom music box case. During the process of restoring the case, he enlisted some help from his son-in-law, Jonathan Hoyt, another new MBSI member. In order to determine the size of the details, I measured the photo and looked at clocks and music boxes in my collection and those of MBSI members, Larry Karp and Dave Corkrum that had similar moldings and features. The layout was tweaked, and more measurements were taken, until we
decided we finally had everything correct.
About then I got an email from Mark Singleton in England about an item he noticed on eBay. It was the auction catalog from the 1987 Christie’s auction featuring a 24 ½“ Polyphon musical hall clock on the front cover in high resolution full color. I bought the catalog, scanned it, and enlarged it, so I could see more details than I could from the picture in the book. I could see the grain patterns, carving details, and the metal floral designs in the clock and the music box section of the musical hall clock. The enlargement helped fill in some of the details of the carvings, moldings, and metal florals that were not clear from the picture in the book. We determined that the wood was rift sawn red oak.
Case under construction.
24 ½” Polyphon musical hall clock as featured on the cover of the 1987 Christie’s auction catalog.
John started making the wood parts of the clock case and did the assembly.
I also got some carving help from an old German wood carver named Anton to complete most of the carved case details.
Case under construction.
Lower side carving.
Upper side carving.
Carving of Polyphon name.
Upper musical clock case with woodworker John Haugh.
Upper clock door
Lower column carving
Original metal floral remnant
I located a very high quality German clock movement that would fit. I couldn’t find someone to do the metal sculptures, so initially I had the upper floral carved by Anton as seen in the picture to the left. But with further investigation, I found a person in North Carolina, Michael Hill, who agreed to work with me to recreate the upper and lower floral parts in metal.
I sent him pictures of the floral designs and a picture of a remnant of the lower floral that I had gotten with the music box. I also sent him duplicates of the two wooden case pieces where the metal sculptures were to be mounted. He made up each floral to fit exactly. He sent me in-progress pictures and we eventually honed in on designs that looked like the originals.
I noticed that the leaves that were used on the lower rose floral were different in the upper and lower parts of the bouquet. We looked at some roses in our yard and found that rose leaves differ by the variety of rose and also change as the rose matures from bud to bloom. He copied the pattern from the
picture, shaping the leaves and roses to look natural and like the original. There was also another floral in the upper clock case that looked more like oak leaves and he worked on them to make them look as realistic as possible. Michael did a great job and the metal florals look just like the originals.
In progress upper floral
In progress lower floral
Mechanism for a 24 ½” Polyphon music hall clock
I was amazed at how much artistic talent Polyphon used throughout this instrument and with such attention to detail. Everywhere you turn you see that they went the extra mile to make it as exquisite as possible.
I did the restoration of the music box mechanism and was impressed at how massive and robust it was. The mechanism was in very good condition and looked like it had very little play time on it.
I bought nine of my favorite discs from Dave Corkrum for this music box.
Next I had the case refinished by Albert’s Antique Refinishing and it looks great. He has a way of making the fin- ish look like the whole case was original even though the top clock part is new. The case stands 8’ 9” tall and is quite impressive. The musical clock now resides in our bedroom, the only place in the house that has 9 foot ceilings. It will be on the 2012 MBSI Annual Meeting house tour so you can see and hear it in person.
Photo credits: Bob Caletti
Finished 24 ½” Polyphon musical hall clock.