MEET THE DEALERS

NANCY FRATTI
Nancy Fratti’s interest in music boxes began in 1968, when her mother insisted she take an adult education course in clock repair, and gave her a cuckoo clock to take along.
It turned out that the cuckoo bird only needed oiling, but the self-taught repairman (her father was a machinist) was soon restoring music boxes. One of the first people she met was MBSI member Joseph Roesch in Syracuse, New York, with whom she conducted a restoration school until 1996.
Today, besides offering a limited restoration service, Fratti publishes the only music box restoration supply catalogue in the world, in which the hobbyist can find things like damper wire, governor jewels, and special tools.
She also stocks a large number of books about music boxes and mechanical music.
And when someone is looking for a metal record, the first question he is likely to hear is, “Have you tried Nancy Fratti?” “I have about 2500 discs,” she says. “It’s probably the largest stock anywhere available for sale.”
Fratti was recently elected a trustee of the Musical Box Society International.
Fratti’s hobbies include doing stained glass work and crocheting. She retains her pilot’s license, and was introduced to area near the Vermont border where she built her home when her Piper Cub was forced down in inclement weather.
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BRUCE and CHARLOTTE MAGER
At 251 W. 30th St. in New York City, Bruce and Charlotte Mager own and operate WAVES, New York’s only retail outlet for vintage radios and talking machines.
The store stocks around 250 vintage radios, many phonographs, and thousands of 78rpm records. Also early electrical apparatus such as telephones, fans, and toasters.
“Almost everything works,” adds Bruce, semi-seriously.
The Magers began their business around 25 years ago selling sea shells at a flea market. “We bought one radio, and then we bought more than we could handle, so we started selling them also.”
WAVES’ machines have appeared in many Broadway shows, and WAVES has dealt with celebrities such as Bette Middler, Matt Dillon, Whoopi Goldberg and Woody Allen. One radio was bought as a special gift for Paul McCartney.
Art deco wooden radios from the 30s and 40s seem to be popular now in New York City, he notes.
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JEAN-PAUL AGNARD
Recently retired, Jean-Paul Agnard worked as a researcher in aerial cartography at Laval University in Montreal. He received his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1992.
Born and educated in France, Agnard has lived in Canada and Morocco.
He maintains a phonograph museum of around 230 machines--cylinder phonographs only-- in St. Anne de Beaupre, Quebec. About half the collection is of European origin, many culled from his trips to the continent while living in Morocco.
Agnard has reproduced some parts on a limited scale, including trunions for many of the Columbia cylinder machines, 5” mandrels, and records for the Edison doll.
On the web: www3.sympatico.ca/jean-paul.agnard/collection.html

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