OK... So you might be thinking, "Antiques? How is that art? That's just old stuff..."
Nope. I mean, some antique stores are filled with useless old stuff that a granny turned in for some cash, but some antique stores are really something special.
We came across one of these good stores in Solvang. It was a huge store with all different kinds of things. They had a See's Candies scale, several pianos, a foot organ (you have to push two pedals for sound), lots of older kinds of music boxes, and various small collectibles.
But the object that fascinated me the most was something called a Violano Virtuoso. It's basically a piano and a violin that play themselves put together in one box. True, it doesn't sound too impressive considering all of the advances we've made in recording/listening to music in the past several decades. If you consider that this was made in the 1920's and that it still works, it's pretty cool. Of course, it can't play very many pieces, and it might be just a "little bit" bigger than a CD player (it's "only" about 6 feet tall).
This is a picture of part of a Violano Virtuoso.
It must have been a very creative person that came up with this idea. And how talented the people who made it were. It took them 13 years to finish the project, and it was well worth it.
Of course, these are no longer for practical uses; they have become a true collctible. Some estimate there to be about 700-800 left out of several thousand.
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