Guido Bondi

An Italian-born maker who patented a mold in Kentucky in 1921 and worked from his house in Newport until his death in 1945.

Guido Bondi was born in Pistoia, in Italy, and made ocarinas in northern Kentucky. He patented a mold for forming them in 1921, worked from his house in Newport, and died in 1945. Almost nothing has been written about him.

Guido Bondi died in 1945. A descendant has been identified and has not been asked about this page. The account below is built from his patent, from a newspaper obituary, and from a discussion on The Ocarina Network in 2014 and 2015; every row of the chronology names where it came from. Nothing here is reproduced from that discussion beyond short quotations.

What is known

He was born on July 17, 1879, at Pistoia, in Tuscany, northern Italy. When he applied for his patent in September 1919 he swore he was a citizen of the United States, living at Dayton, in the county of Campbell, Kentucky. He died on August 17, 1945, at Covington, aged 66, and is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate — section 69, single grave 539. An obituary in the Cincinnati Enquirer of August 19, 1945 called him a musical instrument maker who had worked from his Newport home for many years, and named his widow Geneva and three sons: Anthony, Herman and Paul. The museum has not seen the newspaper itself, only a transcription of that obituary published on Find a Grave.

Between the patent and the obituary there are twenty-four years and no sources.

The patent is about making, not playing

On September 29, 1919 he filed for a mold for making musical instruments, and it was granted on February 22, 1921 as US 1,369,381. It claims inner and outer mold members for forming a wind instrument from plastic material — a way of producing the same shape repeatedly, in quantity.

It is not a claim about a new kind of ocarina, and readers have been confused by that. A collector who worked through it in 2014 said he could not find anything in it that was an innovation. He was reading it as an instrument patent. As a manufacturing patent it is unremarkable, and that is the point.

The date on the instrument is a floor, not a birthday

Bondi’s instruments carry a bird over the initials G.B., and some also carry a patent date. Liggins describes exactly that, and an instrument in the museum’s collection carries the date in words: Feb. 22, 1921.

That date is misread constantly. Instruments turn up described as made in 1921, and sold as antique on the strength of it — one collector complained in 2014 about a Bondi listed as “ANTIQUE” and “VICTORIAN” because the seller took the patent date for a date of manufacture.

A patent date means the instrument was made on or after the day the patent was granted, and says nothing about how long after. A marked Bondi postdates February 22, 1921, and the mark says nothing more than that.

Many Bondis carry no patent date at all, and why is not known. It may record which mold an instrument came from rather than when it was made — the patent is for a mold, and he made several sizes. It may be that the patent expired, seventeen years from grant, in February 1938. The museum has not established which, and until it does, an unmarked Bondi cannot be dated at all.

He died in 1945, and one sentence has been read as saying otherwise

Liggins writes that the instruments “were distributed from his base in Kentucky from 1920s to the 1960s,” and that has been repeated for years as a working life — that Bondi made ocarinas into the 1960s. He died on August 17, 1945.

The sentence is about distribution from a base, not about a man at a bench, and it never says Bondi was alive. So the obituary and the book are not in conflict, and the museum’s position is that Guido Bondi is documented from 1919 until his death in 1945.

The museum has not established that instruments were distributed into the 1960s. Liggins is the only source for it, the book gives no source of its own, and nothing else found so far corroborates it.

So two questions are open, not one: whether the 1960s is correct at all, and if it is, who ran the operation for the fifteen years after Bondi died — his widow Geneva, one of his three sons, or somebody who bought it. City directories, probate records, or the family’s own memory would answer both.

One detail of the book’s wording is worth correcting, because it has traveled. Liggins says Bondi “patented his ocarinas.” He did not — he patented a mold, as above — and that loose phrase in the only printed source is part of why the patent is so widely misread.

What is claimed and not established

His instruments are said to be the ones heard in The Wizard of Oz. Two people on The Ocarina Network said so independently, one of them saying he learned to play on the set that had been given to his godfather by the player who used them in the film. Both accounts are second-hand, and the museum has found nothing that confirms it.

He is also grouped with Fiehn, Meissen, EWA and Old Glory as makers who began from poor copies of Budrio instruments. He was Italian, but Pistoia is in Tuscany and Budrio is in Emilia-Romagna, about fifty miles (eighty kilometers) apart across the Apennines, and no source found so far connects him to Budrio.

The house

He worked from a house in Newport, Kentucky. A man who grew up in the town, and whose grandfather dug clay from a nearby creek for Bondi as a boy, described it standing empty for decades after the interstate took the neighborhood around it. It was demolished to build a shopping development. Guido’s son Paul, the last owner of the house, died in January 2014, a few months before the thread that recovered all of this was started.

The family’s own photograph of Guido outside the house, with his sons Paul and Geno, was posted publicly by his great-granddaughter in 2015; the museum has not asked her about it and does not reproduce it.

Chronology

Dates the museum has been able to establish, and where each comes from. The obituary is the Cincinnati Enquirer of August 19, 1945, which the museum knows only through a transcription on Find a Grave; the patent is US 1,369,381.

Jul 17, 1879	Born at Pistoia, in Tuscany, Italy	the 1945 obituary
Sep 29, 1919	Files his patent application, Serial No. 327,098, swearing he is a citizen of the United States living at Dayton, Campbell County, Kentucky	his patent
Feb 22, 1921	Granted US 1,369,381 — a mold for forming wind instruments from plastic material, inner and outer members	his patent
Aug 17, 1945	Dies at Covington, Kentucky, aged 66. Buried at Evergreen Cemetery, Southgate — section 69, single grave 539	the 1945 obituary