Perhaps the finest piece(s) I've seen, as an adult at least (been a long time since the Henry Ford Museum), were the what I surmise to be
'Royal
Class' "Music Boxes" at the Mark Yaffee mansion of Tampa. This was some year ago now, but happened to "attend" a couple party's at that house (he
lost it all last I heard). The house itself was about worthy of this thread (google it). As far as I know about it was / is the biggest most fancy
pance mansion in the Tampa Bay area. Its in the most fancy pance neighborhood I know about, "Avila", and he bought something like 3 or so whole lots
to end up with maybe it was 2 acres.
All stone outside (and lots of it), all fancy woodwork inside and the 'lawn' all putting green grass lol
(a full golf course stretches thru the whole neighborhood).
But then inside there he had a flipping museum of giant pristine "Music Boxes" (and 'diorama automatons'). Think 'juke box' but in like year 1890 or
something, interesting no less is some of them were made by Wurlitzer. I had never even known about such creations as these music boxes, even though
my old profession had me a sort of expert on jukeboxes.
They operated like "automatic pianos', but had metal cylinders instead. Dude built an entire room just for holding the vast array of 'songs' he had
for the different sized pieces (some were seriously huge most peoples bedrooms would barely fit one), all fancy pance custom woodwork of course that
room was.
The beasts essentially have a symphony of instruments inside them. Here goes one such creature:
And an article about the collection:
www.artfixdaily.com...
The 'Diorama Automatons' where like framed scenes, 3D moving pictures. I had seen such devices at some point (probably Henry Ford Museum), but not so
many like that and all mint.
Dude basically went all in just to have it all for a couple years, and let it all go. Gold dude and this was back in the housing boom / cash for gold
period he was coming out of as he hit his peak with the ordeal.
edit on 5-6-2018 by IgnoranceIsntBlisss because: (no reason given)