Accordeon or Seraphine. No serial number. Wheatstone 1830-5. No label. 11.12" x 3.69" diameter walnut veneer ends, with slide in action board, and on the left-hand four pearl foot studs, and one pearl embouchure (the other absent). The left-hand has a simple air flap, operated with the finger via one pearl-mounted hole, letting air through another. The right-hand has 8 pearl keys, with adjacent numbers 1-8 connected via ebony leavers to pearl pallets, plus two brass pallets at each end of the hand bar, worked by a brass slide, and controlling a brass reed and chord. Fabric thumb strap on a small nickel bar. Four-fold hand-painted green leather bellows with gold decorated pink bellows papers and gold paper trim, two pearl touch pieces on left-hand end. The reeds and reed pan appear to be a later, more continental style, each pallet covers a zinc reed plate with two nickel tongues and a single rivet. The plates are screwed to the pan board. This instrument shows developments in the English treatment of the accordion principle: there are right-hand drone valves, and extensive pearl mountings, similar to the earliest known British accordeon (M15a-1996).
