Conformateur for J. B. Mast Co.

One 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...

( Read more... )