by Dr. Bill Black
A PAINTING FOR THE ORGAN FRONT
These landscape paintings were sometimes painted on raised panels, inserts
and other times on the surface of the organ front. Scenes with mountain
forests, streams, lakes, castles and ocean views were often used.
So, with measurements in hand, finding a suitable painting was a top
priority during last summers vacation. There were various scenes to choose
from but the ocean scenes appealed to me most. One in particular had a
lighthouse, ocean view, breaking waves, seagulls and beach (PHOTO A). A very
nice oil painting, just what I was looking for. The tape measure confirmed
that the size was sufficient to fit into the cutout areas. Price was
$60.........a real bargain. The picture was carefully packed into the car
for the trip home.
The canvas with the oil painting was removed from the board on which it was
mounted. I made a thin plywood mounting board with several cutouts to allow
the sound to come out, stapled the painting to this board and fastened this
to the back of the front frame. The lower part of the painting was mounted
in a similar way and installed in the lower panel frame on the organ front
(PHOTO C).
The front was then prepared with a primer paint, sanded a bit and several
coats of the paint applied according to our computerized paint scheme. The
molding around the cymbal was carved and mounted on the crown (PHOTO D). I
also couldnąt resist doing a bit of gold and silver leafing on these
moldings to see how they would look. This is as far as we will go on the
front decoration for now. More decorating will be done later.
Next month, we go back to work on the internal parts.....
Dr. Bill Black is one of the nation's most knowledgeble Wurlitzer band organ experts. He has made recordings of many band organs and other mechanical music machines which are available for purchase at CarouselStores.com.
To compliment the beautiful music of their organs, Wurlitzer went to great
pains to decorate the facades of the organs. In the case of the Wurlitzer
style 153 organ, they describe the facade as follows: Fancy white enamel
front, hand carved scroll work in gold leaf and colors, raised panels with
landscape and flowered designs.
Each year, we go to Ocean City. Maryland for our vacation. In walking the
boardwalk over the years, I took note of several places where they sold oil
paintings and have a large selection. In thinking of a painted scene for the
front of the 105, I wondered if one of these could be used on the front. I
had in mind to take one of these paintings and cut it into pieces to fit
into the cutout areas on the front. I planned to use these scenes on the
side cutout areas and lower panel. The center cutout area would be open to
allow viewing of the pipework.
Now to fit the picture with the front. I placed the painting on the floor
and put the front cutout frames over the picture to visualize how to arrange
the picture (PHOTO B). It was now apparent that the entire painting would
fit into all the cutout areas. To cut it into pieces would really breakup
the entire impression created by the whole scene. Maybe the front would look
best if I used the painting in the center cutout area also. This could be
done by cutting the lower part of the painting off and using that piece in
the lower panel area of the front. The upper portion of the painting could
be used in one piece to fit across all three cutout areas. Since the center
of the painting was the most appealing part of the painting, I decided to
change my plans and not have the pipework exposed after all.
Now to plan the color scheme for the rest of the organ. To do this, I took a
digital photo of the organ from a front view and loaded it into the
computer. I then used a graphics program to paint this picture of the organ
front on the computer. This was a bit time consuming, but it allowed me to
see what the organ would look like in various paint color schemes. I
eventually chose a light blue and white theme with dark blue accents on the
trim. Then, I made a trip paint store to look at their paint chips and buy
the paint.