Conformateur for J. B. Mast Co.
Aug. 31st, 2012 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labricoleuseOne of my former graduate students, Randy Handley, recently purchased an antique Allie-Maillard conformateur. I had the good fortune to be able to inspect and photograph it while recently visiting him, and an interesting historical twist presented itself.
I've been researching conformateurs for quite a while, and particularly since i acquired my own. I've gotten pretty good at taxonomizing differences between models and dating their age and original likely retail value based on things like whether they have a brass nameplate or a mother of pearl nameplate, mostly wooden keys or mostly brass keys or even mother-of-pearl-inlaid keys. Randy's conformateur had one element to it that is new to me though. Let's take a look...
Here's Randy's conformateur, right out of the box from the seller.
Clearly it needs a good cleaning, and in this image you can see a few things about it.
The three red posts are not tightly snugged against the tip oval.
This is a clue that there is some damage to the key mechanism for those three.
See the button in the center? This one is mother of pearl. Some models have
brass buttons and some extremely late models even have celluloid buttons.
So what's so unusual that I hadn't seen before?
1889 PARIS 1900
Manufactured for
J. B. Mast Co
28 West Fourth St.
New-York
I had never seen a leather tip pad stamped with a hatter's company name like this before. Most of the conformateurs i have looked inside have no information printed in the tips, or if they do, it's a maker's mark for the Allie-Maillard company, maybe a date for whatever exposition to which they had recently exhibited a new conformateur design. Finding this inside Randy's conformateur was super-exciting because not only does it provide concrete evidence for this model dating to the 20th century, but it gives the piece definite provenance--we KNOW it was made in Paris for the J. B. Mast Company of New York! But who was J. B. Mast?
Ad for the company from a hatter's trade magazine
Basically, the J. B. Mast Company was a vendor of equipment to hatters all over the US. They sold various kinds of hatter's tools--googling the company name and their two known addresses (this 4th St one in Randy's conformateur and another location at 111 Mercer St.) turns up antique tool and equipment auctions for everything from hat band perforators to silver and ivory hatter's rules.
So, if I were to track Randy's conformateur since its manufacture in the early part of the 20th century in Paris, the first stop on the journey would be to 28 Fourth St in New York City at the establishment of J. B. Mast. Where did it go from there, until it came into Randy's hands? We may never know, though we do know that some previous owner was hard enough on it to bust at least three of the keys. For shame!
I've been researching conformateurs for quite a while, and particularly since i acquired my own. I've gotten pretty good at taxonomizing differences between models and dating their age and original likely retail value based on things like whether they have a brass nameplate or a mother of pearl nameplate, mostly wooden keys or mostly brass keys or even mother-of-pearl-inlaid keys. Randy's conformateur had one element to it that is new to me though. Let's take a look...
Here's Randy's conformateur, right out of the box from the seller.
Clearly it needs a good cleaning, and in this image you can see a few things about it.
The three red posts are not tightly snugged against the tip oval.
This is a clue that there is some damage to the key mechanism for those three.
See the button in the center? This one is mother of pearl. Some models have
brass buttons and some extremely late models even have celluloid buttons.
So what's so unusual that I hadn't seen before?
1889 PARIS 1900
Manufactured for
J. B. Mast Co
28 West Fourth St.
New-York
I had never seen a leather tip pad stamped with a hatter's company name like this before. Most of the conformateurs i have looked inside have no information printed in the tips, or if they do, it's a maker's mark for the Allie-Maillard company, maybe a date for whatever exposition to which they had recently exhibited a new conformateur design. Finding this inside Randy's conformateur was super-exciting because not only does it provide concrete evidence for this model dating to the 20th century, but it gives the piece definite provenance--we KNOW it was made in Paris for the J. B. Mast Company of New York! But who was J. B. Mast?
Ad for the company from a hatter's trade magazine
Basically, the J. B. Mast Company was a vendor of equipment to hatters all over the US. They sold various kinds of hatter's tools--googling the company name and their two known addresses (this 4th St one in Randy's conformateur and another location at 111 Mercer St.) turns up antique tool and equipment auctions for everything from hat band perforators to silver and ivory hatter's rules.
So, if I were to track Randy's conformateur since its manufacture in the early part of the 20th century in Paris, the first stop on the journey would be to 28 Fourth St in New York City at the establishment of J. B. Mast. Where did it go from there, until it came into Randy's hands? We may never know, though we do know that some previous owner was hard enough on it to bust at least three of the keys. For shame!
