Chronologies
Dated accounts of makers, workshops, and brands, built from primary sources, with every line saying where it came from.
A chronology here is an account of one subject — a maker, a workshop, a brand — set out by date, with a source named on every line.
The sources are the subject’s own website where one survives, their own words in an interview or a letter, a newspaper, a patent, or the Internet Archive’s record of when a page existed. Where they disagree, the disagreement is recorded rather than settled: two dates from two documents are two facts about the documents, and choosing between them silently would claim a certainty nobody has.
| Subject | Chronology | What the museum holds |
|---|---|---|
| Anita Feng | the account and its dates | anitasocarinas.com |
| Chris Heuer and Amy Lake | the account and its dates | sixthstreetocarina.com, sixthstreetpottery.com |
| Guido Bondi | the account and its dates | a patent, an obituary, and a forum thread — no website |
| Karen Dunster | the account and its dates | dunster.com |
| Richard Hamlett | the account and its dates | hamlettocarinas.com |
| Robin L. Hodgkinson | the account and its dates | clay-wood-winds.com |
| Rudolph Teschner | the account and its dates | an obituary, a letter to Congress, and a patent search — no website |
| Sandi and Richard Schmidt | the account and its dates | clayz.com |
| Tenrai Ocarina | the account and its dates | tenraiocarina.com |
| The North Country Workshop | the account and its dates | doubleocarina.com |
Two of these subjects are dead — Rudolph Teschner died in 1920 and Guido Bondi in 1945 — and their chronologies are built entirely from public records.
The rest are living, or may be. Richard Hamlett and Sandi Schmidt have given the museum permission. Anita Feng has written back, and the correspondence continues. Chris Heuer has been written to and has not replied. The others have not been asked. A chronology is the museum’s own compilation of dates and sources, so it does not republish anyone’s work — but if one of these is you, the account is yours to correct, and the second column leads to the page that says exactly what the museum holds of your site and on what terms.
Several more are owed and not written. The ones with the deepest material are subjects with no website at all — Budrio, where the modern ocarina was invented; Sojiro, who influenced the Japanese ocarina scene; Gretsch and Waterbury, the industrial makers.
If you can correct anything on these pages, or settle a date they leave open, please write to theocarinamuseum@gmail.com.
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