[Dixielandjazz] Nipper and His Master's Voice

[Harry Callaghan]

Anton:
I thank you for further enlightening the folks here.

I will take my being "close to the mark" as a compliment as I have always
thought of my life as comparable to a game of horseshoes.

Tides,
HC
On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 9:24 PM, Anton Crouch
<anton.crouch at optusnet.com.au>wrote:

> Hello all
>
> Harry Callaghan is close to the mark with his comment about Nipper, the fox
> terrier, and the HMV logo. The full story is a bit more complicated and can
> be found in the now out-of-print publication by Leonard Petts, "The story of
> 'Nipper' and the 'His Master's Voice' picture painted by Francis Barraud",
> 2nd edition, Talking Machine Review, 1983.
>
> The critical point is that Barraud's original painting was of the dog
> listening to a (cylinder) phonograph. The copyright application photograph
> of the original painting was discovered in 1972 and the instrument has been
> identified as an Edison "Commercial" Phonograph, sold in London by the
> Edison-Bell Phonograph Corporation Ltd. This machine was an early version of
> what we now call a dictaphone, ie it both recorded and played-back. It makes
> a lot more sense to have a dog listening to such a machine, rather than a
> disc recording on a gramophone.
>
> We don't know when Barraud painted the first version of the picture -
> writing in 1921, he says "prior to the year 1899". The only hard date we
> have is his application for Memorandum of Assignment of Copyright - 11
> February 1899. Having been turned-down by the Edison-Bell company ("dogs
> don't listen to phonographs"), Barraud approached the Gramophone Company in
> late May 1899 and reached an agreement with it in September 1899 (₤50 for
> the painting, ₤50 for the copyright). Barraud's agreement with the
> Gramophone Company was conditional on his painting-out the phonograph and
> replacing it with a gramophone.
>
> Interestingly, the Gramophone Company did not make much use of the painting
> at first. It was used up until 1902 on letterheads, re-appeared on
> letterheads in 1907 and first used as a record label, with the name "His
> Master's Voice", in 1909. It was across the Atlantic that "the dog"
> took-off. Emile Berliner registered it as a trade mark in the USA in July
> 1900 and this right was acquired by the Victor Talking Machine Company in
> 1901.
>
> Since we don't know when Barraud painted the picture, the big question is
> "was it painted from life, a photograph or from memory?" Since Nipper died
> in 1895 it is unlikely that it was painted from life (Barraud would not have
> waited 3 t 4 years to obtain copyright). The Wikipedia entry for Nipper says
> that Barraud used a photo of Nipper listening to a phonograph but this seems
> to be a misinterpretation of "the photograph" discussed by Frank Andrews (in
> Petts, 1983). The most likely answer is that Barraud used a photo of Nipper,
> sitting alone, and a phonograph which he either owned or borrowed. Of one
> thing we can be confident - Barraud probably didn't know how a phonograph
> worked - the phonograph in the original painting has the horn turned through
> 180° and Nipper is facing the back of the machine.
>
> All the best,
> Anton
>
>
>
>
>
>
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