Bruce
A genuine vintage C soprano I believe. It has sold pretty quickly :-
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/My-Beauti...x-/290868724826?ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:GB:1123.
I was a little tempted. I believe it is a Paris stencil.
I found some details regarding the Winsor instument business in the uk:-
WINDSOR
As a young man, Arthur Octavius Windsor acquired a thorough knowledge of wood and metal
working and by 1887 had a small factory in Birmingham for the making of coffin 'furniture'.
He played the banjo as a hobby and when the instrument started to become universally
played he made some instruments after his own design. He had his own bench in a corner
of his factory where he fashioned the instruments that carried his name as maker.
His banjos proved popular and in three years he had set up an instrument factory in Newhall
Street and was employing a staff of twenty-five, all making banjos. Very soon his range
of instruments included most of the fretted instruments. He made the first mandolin
banjo with a back built up of separate segments and in 1893 took out a patent to use
the same method for the backs of zither-banjos, although he continued to use one-piece
backs on his cheaper models.
At school, Arthur Windsor had been called 'Castle' and he adopted the silhouette of
Windsor Castle as a trade mark and called his premises in Newhall Street 'Castle Works'.
(In addition to the Newhall Street factory, he had sawmills and a wood-working plant in
Mott Street). In the early days, Windsor tested every instrument before it left the factory.
In March 1892 he teamed up with Arthur J.Taylor, a prominent Birmingham teacher and player
of the banjo and the firm of Windsor& Taylor came into being.
They-did business together for
some time before entering into a deed of partnership. It was at this time the firm started
to make open-back banjos. In January, Windsor & Taylor organised the Birmingham B.M.&G.
Orchestra which gave its first public concert in March of that year.
The firm ceased to exist in December 1940
when the factory was destroyed in an enemy air raid. Up to that time Windsor was
probably the largest maker of fretted instruments ever known in this country. The
output of the Newhall Street factory in Birmingham must have been many thousands of
instruments each year.
Ian