concertina in old ad

[mutepointe]

[MTGuru]

How funny. My dad smoked Old Gold. And that concertina is almost upside-down.

[Ptarmigan]

How funny. My dad smoked Old Gold. And that concertina is almost upside-down.

... which makes you wonder, just what exactly was in those cigarettes!

[Nanohedron]

How funny. My dad smoked Old Gold. And that concertina is almost upside-down.

... which makes you wonder, just what exactly was in those cigarettes!

I'd guess one thing that was in those cigarettes was yet another artist who probably only ever played the radio, and was left to his own smoke-woozy devices. Which suggestion of funny combustibles does sort of bring us to the word "treatment", BTW. I look at it and want to call Mom and ask her if she knows what kind of slang that might be, because while it was never in use like that in my home, she knows things.

I must point out the offending cigarette: it is perched in a pure marvel of impossible balance - note its fulcrum-point - upon the fine edge of what I'm pretty sure is a Japanese sakazuki. I have no problem with the ceremonial wine-cup; it's a shot of well-lent elegance-in-repurposing, and its color works in composition. But no known cigarette in this particular universe would stay put like that. And so in addition to concertina we have, all around, a subliminal suggestion that the product exceeds the mundane.

The random match is really only for the sake of composition, but the word "only" belies its simple brilliance. Without it, the tableau would lack much...nay, everything, such is the weight of one simple match. But its semiotics are either pedestrian, or a stretch, and I would probably need some wacky myself to even go there.

I am such a product of my present times that I unconsciously assumed I was looking as a Surgeon General's Warning at bottom right.

[mutepointe]

Isn't it about time someone identifies the concertina?

[MTGuru]

Isn't it about time someone identifies the concertina?

I'd guess an older standard hexagonal Wheatstone English treble 48-button. It looks much like my former 1856 Wheatstone, but with bone buttons and plain bellows. Hard to tell if that's a SN plate on the left end. These would have been pawn shop fare for the photog at the time of the ad (50s-60s), before the concertina market went nuts in the 80s.

I think English Concertina identification is not as much a blood sport as with other instruments. There were basically 2 main makers, Wheatstone and Lachenal, and they were very similar and comparable. Except for the "my concertina has more sides than yours" war between them in the high end models.