Guerrini Accordion Company at the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco, California

Guerrini Accordions were one of the high-end “order yours custom made” accordion companies in San Francisco back in the early 20th century.  Marion Jacobson’s Squeeze This! book turned me on to a site with a really cool item.

This picture (below) is of the Guerrini booth at the 1915 San Francisco world’s fair (The Panama Pacific International Exposition to be exact, one of several that year to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal, and presumably the hoped-for boom in West-coast businesses.)  There were a lot of accordions there; my little antique Hohner says that company won one of the thousands of awards that were given out to various products.

But this Guerrini pic remains a technological marvel today in that it’s such a good photograph that it was able to be blown up and you can see pretty clearly the tiny pictures on the wall of the booth, pictures of accordionists who played Guerrini instruments in 1915.  You can’t do that with your average jpeg!

Here’s the big picture:

Here’s some of the little ones blown up:

          

      

They’re trying to identify some of the ones they don’t know, I think I recognize one as Pietro Deiro.  (See below, unidentified on the left, and compare to Pietro and his accordion on the right.)

      

At first I thought the above one was Guido Deiro, Pietro’s brother.  But doesn’t it look like the same fellow (nice tux) and the same accordion in the picture on the right from the Classical Free-Reed site?  Comparing them, that may even be his name on the bottom left, like the one on the clearer picture.

That’s my research suggestion for today.

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