Serinette

Ch. Denis

ca. 1800 · wood, various materials · Musical Instruments

This tiny organ has three registers of pipes, stopped diapason, octave and fifteenth. It posses three additional barrels, which permit it to play a total of thirty tunes. The tunes are listed on a paper label inside the cover. There is no keyboard, but a pinned barrel is activated with a hand crank (which also pumps the bellows) in order to play a tune. Organs of this type were often used for teaching songs to birds. Technical description: Rectangular wood case painted black with striping and floral designs, the lid top painted with a scene of hunters and a fountain, the interior with blue flowers on an orange background; three ranks of ten metal pipes each, two ranks open, the rear one stopped, two back ranks held by a rack covered with decorative paper; a crank protruding from the front right of case turns a wood worm and crank shaft that rotates the pinned and stapled wood barrel and pumps a double-fold feeder beneath a single fold reservoir; three stop levers extend through the left side of case; barrel slides on a bracket and has a 12 notch shift pin engaged by a drop latch, permitting tune selection; two extra barrels are in a separate box (b,c,d); paper label glued inside lid lists tunes on three barrels.

Artist

Ch. Denis

Date

ca. 1800

Medium

wood, various materials

Culture

French

Department

Musical Instruments

Credit line

The Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments, 1889