Item Type: Wheatstone Concertina Catalogue

Summary

Full Description: A Wheatstone 'Blue Boards' Concertina catalogue from the 1950s, this from the papers of Mr Harry Minting, last manager of C Wheatstone and Co., and containing loose printers' proofs of the final catalogue. It was written and designed by Mr Minting, and this elegant 28-page brochure profiles the history of the firm and its instruments, their manufacture, the wide range of models and fingering systems on offer, and profiles of leading players of the day. The noted teacher and historian of the concertina Frank E Butler says of Minting:
"Harry Minting, the last manager of the Wheatstone firm, and a concertina player and teacher active in London for many decades started a concertina school in the early 1950s.... He recruited so many students it became a little bit of a problem, and he engaged me to take his beginners' classes. He had two classes. And this really got me deep into teaching. I'd only done it in a desultory fashion up to then. I decided immediately that there was nothing published that met my requirements, so I wrote the exercises myself, and that, in 1955, was the beginning of the Butler tutor [eventually published by Free Reed in 1974].
... Minting after a time transferred his concertina club to the Holloway Institute, where I teach now [1975]. Minting himself became ill, and I stepped in as his substitute, his deputy, and was quite happy over it. ... And when, in 1959, Minting ... decided to give that up entirely ... he asked me if I would like to take the class. And I took this class over from him, really, on a few hours notice."

More information on Harry Minting at www.concertina.com/carlin/frank-butler-interview and in the Wheatstone section of concertina.com - www.concertina.com/wheatstone

Source Catalogue No: The Concertina Museum: 2.1.1-002