Very rare Ivory Bakelite GECoPhone from 1930's
Over the weekend in Singapore, I have manged to find a very rare ivory Bakelite phone used in Queen Mary vessel during the 1930s. May of this phone is without the dialer but I am lucky to find one with a dialer and is also in working condition.
Details from the net:
The Gecophone was used in many prestige installations such as the Queen Mary and the Royal Train. When the Queen Mary ended her service, quite a few of these phones reached private collections. Most were collected in the US because that was where she was decommissioned and converted to a floating hotel.
They are easily recognised by the unique dial lable offering ship to shore telephone calls from the passenger’s own stateroom and by the different shaped handset cradle.
Commissioned to be one of the greatest Atlantic Ocean Liners, Queen Mary's interiors were designed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Smooth Art-Deco lines were the style of the day and that influenced the ships design and selection of fittings.
The Ivory Gecophone shown in the attached pictures was an ideal choice at that time – obviously GEC would have been delighted to have their phone selected for the QM staterooms. Quite advanced, at that time a passenger could also place a call from ship to shore.
The picture below shows a First Class Stateroom complete with Ivory Gecophone in the right hand corner.
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