I hereby assert my Constitutionally guaranteed right to remain ignorant. And this seems a good opportunity to plead with you to restrain from attributing every unidentified, NY-style reel to one of the Vom Hofes or "Conroy." There were other reelmakers in and around NYC in the late 19th century, but our common knowledge doesn't yet allow us to identify their products convincingly.
There's no question that JVH made a lot of reels. And there's no question that many unidentified reels have features similar to those on marked JVH reels. But given that "imitation...flattery", and if we allow for the possibility that JVH did not make every reel in the northeast, we can conclude that a reel may remain unidentified pending further discoveries.
Henry's rule-of-thumb about Malleson, whose reels we know too little about, is a good one. But Malleson wasn't the only mysterious maker of the period in that area, either. For example, check out the reels shown here:
http://orcaonline.org/images/pixel.gif ... /Mo/Mo.htm
They have features in common with each other and with marked JVH reels, but I find it hard to imagine that the JVH shop would have been equipped to produce the enormous variety of reels, in so many different styles, that we attribute to it.
In the long run, it will be more fun to admit we have unidentified reels in our collections, and maybe the itch to ID them will result in the additional research that we need so badly.
By the way--Thanks, Ed, but you were misinformed.
St. Vernon
