Before Thorens Turntables, Thorens made mechanical musical movements for music boxes and apparently beer steins. It was 1968 when my parents moved into the new home, I was eight years old and started exploring the castle(what my friends called it), an English Tudor style built in 1928, you know, one of those homes with a round tower front, round foyer with old steel casement windows, clay tile roof, flagstone porches front and rear, etc. The former owners left behind lots of stuff including a small grand piano, furniture to fit curved walls. These beer steins were left on the bar shelves. My bedroom over the garage had a built in speaker system in a wall with a crawl space access to it from the closet and also access to one of the attics from the bathroom. I found all sorts of old stuff, mechanical windup toys, books gadgets, antennas. When I saw the steins I immediately laid claim to them, well actually know one else cared. It wasn't until years later that I recognized the Thorens connection. I even showed one once to Thorens reps at a CES show in the eighties in Chicago who surprisingly were unaware of this part of there history.
emergingsoul Very heavy. When I saw it at Marshall Field's Fine/Museum Crystal Dept., They made me put on cotton gloves but they made it impossible to hold on to it. The piece right in front is unusual. Made by a Swiss artist. So great crystal has no flaws; swirls, bubbles, etc., but in this egg of leaded glass, there is a flower that depending on the angle elongates like a water Lilly and the artist somehow placed bubbles on the tips of petals and center to look like water droplets without disturbing the rest of the glass. I'm thinking, how many did he have to break to get this one right. While we're at it, I should put a photo up of my Hoya 'Stylus', not actually called that but when you see it you'll know why. For now, all my stuff on my mantle is put away replaced with Christmas stuff.
