Music box
Videos
A music box or musical box is an automatic musical instrument in a box that produces musical notes by using a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel com
Music box by Polyphon-Musikwerke in Leipzig, Germany
A music box
Interior of a large music box at the Museu de la Música de Barcelona in Catalonia
Typical table music box, with six interchangeable cylinders
Singing bird box
Videos
A singing bird box is a box, usually rectangular-shaped, which contains within a miniature automaton singing bird concealed below an oval lid and activated by means of an operating lever.
Music box
…Player piano Singing bird box Shanghai Gallery of Antique Music Boxes and Automata…
An unusual singing bird box by Frères Rochat, c. 1810. The bird is shown in a tiny cage, not concealed inside the box as usual.
Frères Rochat work with independent musical movement and center-seconds, quarter-repeating watch, ca. 1820.
"Views of Switzerland", Charles Abraham Bruguier, enamel attributed to Louis Dufaux père, 1840s. Gold, marble, mother-of-pearl and painted on enamel, ruby and emerald-set musical singing bird box in the form of a paperweight.
Blaise Bontems ad published in 1878. The last line reads: "Tabatière avec Oiseau chantant" (Snuffbox with singing bird). So by the 1870s he was already making them.