BRATTLEBORO-The Estey Organ Museum will host an open house on Tuesday, Sept. 30, to celebrate several milestones. The public is invited to this free event from 4 to 6 p.m.
The day will mark the 211th birthday of Estey Organ Company Founder Jacob Estey.
Trustees will also celebrate the restoration of Estey's 100,000th reed organ, completed by Craig Cowing, who has spent the summer readying the organ for a musical debut on the 30th.
As Estey organ production approached this milestone in the late 1870s, they designed a special model for the occasion, calling it The Salon, and it became very popular. Estey understood the power of words, and the Salon model soon became The Grand Salon.
Another feature of the celebration will be the dedication of an 8-by-12-foot enlargement of a 150-year-old Estey poster to longtime museum volunteer John Carnahan.
Production of the mural was made possible by the collaboration of people "dedicated to preserving local history," wrote organizers in a news release.
It began years ago, when collector Mark Richards contacted Carnahan, then a volunteer at the Brattleboro Historical Society (BHS). Richards and his father had bought the poster, and it had hung in their offices. They frequently loaned it to the BHS for exhibits. A few years ago, Richards finally donated it to the Society.
The mural project of the original 2-foot-by-3-foot poster, an artist's depiction of the Estey Organ factory operation in the late 1800s, began earlier this year, shepherded by Estey Museum Trustee Dennis Waring.
John Clements and Nel McNeill of Zephyr Designs carefully removed the poster from the frame. Museum Trustee Allan Seymour photographed it and passed the file to the folks at Minuteman Press who printed the mural.
Clements is also responsible for framing and mounting the finished mural.
"The mural," said Waring, "has it all. The eight slate-sided buildings of the Estey factory, the piles of [...] lumber for the organ cases and actions, the homes of many factory workers, and an inset of portraits of the company's key men: Jacob Estey, his son Julius, and Levi Fuller. Another inset features a Victorian parlor scene complete with Estey organ."
For more information, visit esteyorganmuseum.org.
This Town and Village item was submitted to The Commons.