Introduction to Historic Musical

Instrument Trade Catalogs.

In 1990, I created an annotated bibliography of of all the musical instrument trade catalogs in the Library of Congress, Music Division printed before about 1930. Since then, I have expanded that list of about 460 to create the list that appears on this website. Whenever possible, I have included the name of the institution that owns a copy of the catalog.

The value of musical instrument trade catalogs is only now being fully appreciated by researchers. With the destruction of company papers, due to fires, floods, mergers, and the general ravages of history, often the only information that a company manufactured instruments are the instruments, the trade catalogs, and a few other meager resources.

I have digitized many catalogs I personally own, and a number of other catalogs for which I was able to obtain photocopies. I’ve digitally re-engraved many of the pages to make them more readable. I have not added any new information that I could not conclusively prove was originally on the page. These digitized catalogs are available on CD only (see below for a link).

Because the resources I have used for this project are basically related to U.S. companies, I have been unable to include many catalogs from elsewhere in the world.

Readers are also directed to:

The Chicago Public Library Special Collections and Preservation Division. Neighborhood History Research Collection. http://www.chipublib.org/008subject/012special/tcc.html

The Library of Congress. www.LOC.gov. Find the link to the online catalog. Searching for musical instrument catalogs there is most efficiently done by browsing using the Library of Congress call number ML155. Sadly, this search strategy is not also available on many other libraries' websites.