So for what percentage of your collection can you put a name to the builder?
Upon reflection, it seems my collection has been drifting from factory/large shop bikes to small builders. Perhaps my subconcious has been culling the herd to focus on frames where I can put a name to the fella wielding the torch and file. The numbers work out as follows:
Bikes where I know who built them:
1. Two 1980's Stan Pikeses, 1 racer, 1 tourer. I've nver heard of Stan having anyone else in the shop. 2. 1954 Algurn. Fairly certain to be a Stuart Purves frame. 3. 1980 Marinonni. Back in the day when Guiseppe did all the work. 4. 2005 Goodrich. Unless Curt is importing em from the far east :-) 5. '78 Assenmacher Tandem. Matt did have some shop help, but only he built the tandems. 6. '04 Landshark Tandem. John Slawta, lone wolf indeed. Fillet brazed steel, Brooks saddles and friction shifted, so KOF anyway.
Bikes where I may be able to find out who dunnit.
1. '54 Major Nichols. A smaller shop, who was building here in '54? Did the Major himself wield the torch? 2. '49 Ephgrave #1. Could have been Les himself as this is early in the marque's history, but Ephgrave did use contract builders during their history. 3. Mid '70's MKM. Has the early MM headbadge, so perhaps Mr. Mason himself did the work, but it could also have been after Steve Elsworth took over as shop foreman.
We'll never know:
1. '75 Gitane TDF. Thank you, Jacques, whoever you were.
So that works out to 60% I'm pretty sure I know who did em, 30% might be able to find out, and only 10% annonymous builders. And as I look back over the last three years, the bikes I've let go have generally been the large factory or shop operations where the builder was annomymous (Raliegh Pro and International, Intalvega Super Course, Trek 510, PX-10, Schwinn Paramount (of course it had to be either Lucille or Wanda), Mondia, Torpado etc etc.). The only frame I've sold that I know who built it was a Cirrus 10 made by Tom Teesdale, and that was a frame fit issue.
So how does knowing who built the frame affect it's desirablility? Do frames made by small shops where you can ID the workman have any additional cachet? Naturally, a one man operations isn't going to have the Palmares of any of the big boys. But perhaps they add something in animism of the machine. Which is more desirable?
Tom Adams, Shrewsbury NJ
BobHoveyGa@aol.com wrote:
Of COURSE most of these guys whose name is on the downtube left the shop as soon as they could... wearing a suit in the front office was a status symbol to be sure, a sign that your business was big enough and prosperous enough for you to be the boss and not to have to get your hands dirty. Still, there's
enough evidence that at least some of these builders actually enjoyed buildi ng frames and always kept their hand in, or in some cases continued, for a time , to build the frames that "mattered", for pro racers or special customers. Or knocked together the occasional prototype...
So if the evidence is that someone like Ernesto or Faliero stopped building frames, great. Does it then make sense to leave it at that and make no eff ort to find out exactly when (or even if) that happened? Or to show no interes t in the individuals they trusted enough to continue producing frames with their names on them? Listen, if I had the opportunity back in the 70's to go France and see the factory where my beloved old PX-10 was built, I know I'd almost certainly be disappointed by the slapdash construction and lack of ha nd work... but I would still be interested in how my bike was put together and would certainly enjoy meeting the group of people (as opposed to the single individual) responsible for its creation. As for my '68 Masi Special, I wou ld be delighted to discover that Faliero had even some small hand in its creation, but if not, I would still be very excited to meet the guys who did build it, whoever they were... whether Alberto, or some young kid, I don't care... I'd still want to meet them and hear whatever stories they'd be willing to share about
what the shop was like back then. Wouldn't you? Or wouldn't you like to chat for a bit with the two ladies who brazed all those Paramounts, even if neither one of them was named Schwinn?
I know some may view this as a tendency to romanticize what is really just a
commodity, a commercially produced object. I can understand that attitude,
and I can only respond by saying that we are not looking at something that i s black and white, where you have Colin Laings that are the loving product of a single meticulous producer on the one hand and PX-10's that are the mass-produced assemblage of an uncaring group of workers just waiting for th eir next coffee break on the other. There are shades of grey, and to see that one o nly has to ask Brian about the early days at Carlsbad... few of those frames wer e the product of a single individual, but Brian will probably tell you that ma ny of the folks doing the significant fabrication were guys who took a certain degree of pride in what they were doing, and many left the marks of their individual hands to the degree that a discerning eye can still tell who file d a particular frame. In a case like this I think it is not only nice to know who that individual was, but it would be a darned shame if no one was interested en ough to find out until it was too late and all these guys were forgotten.
Bob Hovey Columbus, GA
Pat Moffat writes:
>e-ritchie makes a valid comment concerning who built a specific bicycle.
I
have a 1971 Masi, and I have never wondered who built it, and I guess that I
don't really give a rip who built it, and the reason is...I never knew the guy. Compare Masi with Colin Laing, and the story changes. I suspect th at Colin has built every Colin Laing bike ever sold and badged as such. (snipped )
>From e-RICHIE (Richard Sachs) blog that speaks to the issue of whether
Faliero Masi built my bike or not or if it even matters for that matter...
"thanks, p?te. you've hit the nail on the head. finally. the focus, or preoccupation with the owner/operator mentality is clearly an american one. and it really isn't all pervasive. mr. minolta didn't make my camera. mr. westinghouse doesn't make the oven. no one named 'levi' made the jeans i buy... (snipped) i know-it's all very confusing if you expect this to conform to your fantasy of how it was/should be done. the fact is that these companys were never one-man shops, nor were they ever trying to cling to the romantic notion that the guy who signs the checks should also work at a bench rather than a desk. e-RICHIE"
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