C. Bruno Catalog

[MikeEdgerton]

I found this Bruno catalog online while looking for something else this evening. Beautiful artwork on the accordions, mandolins at the end.

https://archive.org/details/illustratedcatal00cbru

[brunello97]

Awesome, Mike. Thanks. Did you find a date on the catalog? I have an older Bruno catalog in my files date 1881-82 with a different street address in NY.

Love the color illustrations throughout and particularly the "accordeons". I got a Hohner button accordion last summer which has been cutting deeply into my mandolin time. Hohner bought out Kalbe (which are featured in the Bruno catalog) some time in the '20s, I believe, but still marketed the Kalbe name into the '30s. Or so I've been told.

This catalog certainly looks older than the '20s to my eye.

I ought to link this catalog over at melodeon.net. I think those British dudes would get a (very droll) kick out of it.

Mick

[MikeEdgerton]

The page says it was published circa 1890. I'd love to find more years for Bruno catalogs.

[MikeEdgerton]

Here is one from 1881. Smaller selection, no color.

https://archive.org/details/illustratedcat00cbru

[MikeEdgerton]

A later catalog, still before 1900. The product line has grown as have the number of pages. Only two pages of mandolins, all bowlbacks.

https://archive.org/stream/illustrat...ge/n0/mode/2up

[brunello97]

A later catalog, still before 1900. The product line has grown as have the number of pages. Only two pages of mandolins, all bowlbacks.

https://archive.org/stream/illustrat...ge/n0/mode/2up

The 1881 (Cortland Ave. address) is the one I have. That would be pretty early on viz the mandolin craze in this country.

Super cool to see. The Bruno mandolins in these catalogs look distinctly different the classic (Oscar Schmidt?) Bluto scratchplate models I associate with later Brunos.

These really are a snapshot of what was popular in terms of music and obviously instruments. Band horns still dominant from the post Civil War to Sousa era. Stringed instruments (besides violins) yet to be ascendant. Loads of "music boxes". Accordion technology just taking off.

Good stuff, as Johnny Carson used to say.

Mick

[MikeEdgerton]

Drums were prominent as well. You can see the product lines he's distributing growing. That in itself is pretty cool actually. It wasn't like it is now. If you sold it you had it in stock. More items mean more room, thus the address changes.

[MikeEdgerton]

Here's a timeline that might shed light on the addresses.

http://www.adirondackbranch.net/Hist...%20History.pdf

[brunello97]

Drums were prominent as well. You can see the product lines he's distributing growing. That in itself is pretty cool actually. It wasn't like it is now. If you sold it you had it in stock. More items mean more room, thus the address changes.

I remember from the old Ken Burns series on "Jazz" that there were so many military bands during the American Civil War that the supply of available used brass instruments afterwards had a direct effect on the kinds of brass band / marching band / Sousa-phonics that led into what became early jazz in America.

Drums would have played a key role in all that as well. Parades, marches, military reunions etc must have shaped a lot of late 19c music. An 1881 catalog would have been 16 years after the WBTS. Some of those Bruno horns conceivably may have been NOS from military band suppliers. That's pure conjecture, as I have no idea of the makeup of military bands in those days.

Those accordions (with the "horns" look a lot like the kinds popular in Central Europe. Germany unification (uh, the first one) was only about 10 years earlier. The instruments sold no doubt reflect the changing make up of ethnicities -- and music -- as it evolved in the country, too.

Fascinating snapshots.

Mick

[MikeEdgerton]

Well, Bruno was selling into a market of recent immigrants from Europe. If they liked that instrument in the old country they would be looking for it here as well. I worked as a young man for an old line bicycle distributor that had been in the same building since the early 30's. It's fascinating to me how much their catalog of instruments paralleled our catalog of bikes. Our older catalogs started out as a few items and grew. There were no photographs just drawings. Oh how the business models have changed.

[brunello97]

Well, Bruno was selling into a market of recent immigrants from Europe.....Our older catalogs started out as a few items and grew. There were no photographs just drawings. Oh how the business models have changed.

Grew and changed, and still touch the same part of our psyche. I grew up in the East Texas swamp and Sears catalogs and The X border blaster radio were my only real links to the outside world. Pretty great ones at that, tiny versions of the internet now. 1881?
That Bruno catalog must have been mind blowing, like a bike catalog for my Daddy in 1934.

I'm probably from the last generation of architects who learned to think and draw with a pencil before becoming the inevitable digital modeling monsters. My Grandpappy was a commercial lithographer in NYC after getting off the boat from Dublin and before hauling everyone to TX. Those catalog drawings connect at so many deep levels.

Was just talking this afternoon to the gardener here at our building, un vero vato from Monterrey, MX, who said he's always wanted to learn to play the accordion even though his Daddy pushed the guitar on him. He's been shopping online for a made-in-China Hohner Corona.

The more things change the more they strangely stay the same.

Mick

[vic-victor]

I wonder which is the most expensive item from this catalog would be today. One of the bows, perhaps? Or violins? In other words what would you buy in order to sell well today if you'd have a time machine (Loars aside, I mean from this very catalog)? Those fancy $90.00 zithers would barely cost double these days...

[DavidKOS]

When I worked in retail music stores as a teenage stock boy, there were still Bruno catalogs around. Even then a lot of stuff in it looked old-fashioned.

Thanks for the walk through the past.