Vintage Fair, presented by Pale Girl Productions, is one of my favorite virtual events for a lot of reasons, not least the enjoyment of researching some new kind of thing I haven’t made before, followed by the challenge of building it. I’ve seen and admired radio-style parcel stream changers before, but all the ones I recalled harked back to the mid-20th Century or later, and I wanted to go earlier. Besides, Bakelite!
I knew I couldn’t go all the way back to the 1900-1920 period I’ve been doing the last couple of years: Radios were not common before the mid 1920s. Of course, once they started being produced commercially, they were often, yes, bakelite!
Spyralle’s bakelite 1926 radios – our exclusive for Vintage Fair – are an original design inspired by the kinds of radios people had in the 1920s and 1930s, also developed onward from Spyralle’s 1920 Orrery Clock with new mesh and a lot more bells and whistles, mesh and texture-wise.
Our radios serve as music stream changers for a parcel where you have the right to set the music stream. This version does not work on group owned land because they are no transfer and cannot be deeded to the group. If there is enough interest in a transfer/no copy version, we will release one later.
The Orrery Radios join Spyralle’s long running Steampunkish Orrery series, most of which are off the market awaiting updates. A few are emerging from time to time at Spyralle Mauna Waipi’o.
Here is the part that turned out to be the most fun…
Yes, Orrery goes all Modern and 20th Century and Jazz Age! You can detach the cord (and conveniently included wall outlet) if you do not have a handy wall.