Saint- Etienne (Loire) 56 rue Gambetta

Emmanuel Brun and his mother, in the shop 50's

Late 1940's J.M. BRUN Manouche Guitar Hand Made code AC05

Manouche guitar from the early 1900s sold by J.M. Brun - Saint-Etienne (Loire) France. Spruce top, small oval hole typical Manouche style. Selmer style head with Abalone inlay and bone button tuners. Back and sides made of Birch with 4 boards side by side. Rare Ebony Makassar fingerboard and original hollowed out and light ebony bridge, like the Selmer, aluminum tailpiece with rosewood plate inlaid with Mother of Pearl. Straight neck with fingerboard and low action. Perfect intonation. Great Manouche style sound. Complete with its original case. Interesting historical value.

Who would have thought, in the heart of the Auvergne countryside, that little Jean-Marie would one day become a talented musician and inventor, creator, among other things, of the famous automatic piano "Brunophone" the undisputed leader of a musical company? musical instruments and, of course, a very important and much envied notable of the late 19th century in Saint-Etienne.
Jean-Marie was originally gifted with a real musical talent since he composed popular melodies, polkas and waltzes very early, but there was inevitably a decisive element that made him switch definitively to music. Did he meet a violin maker who gave him a taste for the profession? Was he simply influenced and directed towards this profession, given his qualities as a musician? To this day, the mystery remains complete for me. In any case, in 1881 Jean-Marie Brun lived at 4 rue du Bas Vernay in Terrenoire, today attached to Saint-Etienne. In 1885 he was found at number 1 of the same street with his family. Already at this time he was declared a luthier or maker of musical instruments. At the end of 1886, the new address will be 56 rue Gambetta (or place Badouillère) where Jean-Marie's lutherie workshop is also located, but is this a creation or a resumption of the activity? The census of 1896 clearly attests that Jean-Marie Brun runs a music shop at 56 rue Gambetta. It was finally in 1900 that he moved to Cours Victor Hugo, at number 25, then the shop extended from numbers 23 to 27.
It was only on April 25, 1908 that our self-taught musician and expert worker gave birth to the new piano, this time automatic, the "Jean-Marie Brun Brunophone creation, Saint Etienne". He also calls it "Brunomotophone", "motorcycle" adding engine and certainly to differentiate it from the first ones that were only manual and mechanical. But posterity will only remember "Brunophone".
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