Two old friends and a flautina (accordeon)

[razyn]

About 20 years ago our son Ben was a member of the resident company of the Lime Kiln Theater in Lexington, VA.  If we were feeling prosperous we sometimes took him to dinner there at a restaurant called the Wilson-Walker House; in the dining rooms (converted from a double parlor) of that old home, a pair of portraits hung over the twin mantels.  One was a man holding an oblong music book, opened to a dance tune (an Allemande).  The other was a lady, presumably his wife, holding a flautina.  The paintings were undated and unsigned, and the couple unidentified; but they were clearly early, and about contemporary with the introduction of that instrument, probably the early 1840s.  I tried to take photos of them, but the lighting was low and there were other people dining, so my pix (on film, of course) weren't much good.  That restaurant closed in 2006, and I had lost track of the paintings in the age of digital photography.

Yesterday we took a day trip down the Northern Neck (of VA) and stopped, among other places, at the Kilmarnock Antique Gallery -- not our first visit there, but the first in several years.  Didn't see many instruments, and weren't interested in the ones we did see -- an accordion, a reed organ, several pianos both old and modern -- but high on a trellis partition, near bright fluorescent light fixtures, there were the paintings we had seen in Lexington, years earlier:

So, in case anybody wants these, they are $8,000 for the pair.  With them, one gets B&W photo documentation of their condition in 1962, when they belonged to the Maryland Historical Trust and were professionally restored.  They were sold by the Trust (to the Lexington, VA owners of that restaurant) in 1984.  And they are currently in this mall:

http://www.virginia-antiques.com/index.shtml

[razyn]

Not that anybody has shown any interest, but for reference I'm going to link an early photo of a somewhat similar instrument.  This is like a lot of the earlier banjo photos, in that a right-handed instrument appears to be held in a left-handed position, because the image is reversed.

http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/180015946

The lady in the painting has a better instrument than the lady in the photo.

[John Masciale]

Dick,  If I recall correctly, the Gettysburg museum has one of these in their collection.  I know I have seen a photograph of the same instrument.

[razyn]

I had one for about a week.  I won an eBay auction at $150, primarily because I wanted the E. Howe (aka Gumbo Chaff) Preceptor for the Accordeon that came with it.  The guy I had outbid was mad because he couldn't be there to snipe, had choir practice or something.  So I shipped him the instrument and a xerox of the book for about $125 (including the shipping cost to Pittsburgh), and kept the 1843 Preceptor.  I guess that ended up costing me close to $50, which is not too bad, considering.  This purchase was in the late 1990s, by the way.

I've mentioned this Howe collection before, at least on the following thread in 2009, maybe elsewhere:

http://minstrelbanjo.ning.com/forum/topics/1851-gumbo-chaff-tutor

[Dave Culgan]

These old Victorian accordeons seem to have survived 150 years better than the banjos of the period, I see lots of them on ebay but relatively few early banjos. It may be that the banjos were played, modernized, worn out, and discarded whereas these French accordeons fell out of fashion over the cheaper Italian and German version. They are great fun to play and IMHO make a great pairing with early banjo sounds. Dave

[Ian Bell]

Those are beautiful. I flipped the picture of himself over and zoomed in to see what the tune in the book was. Dance music by the looks of the title — "Allamande". You can see most of it. I may have to try playing it, but not now. Time to go to work.