Man behind India’s gramophone museum
NEW DELHI: Sunny Mathew’s fascination with gramophones began at an early age when his uncle brought home an HMV 102. “The music from a suitcase-like box enthralled me. And as I grew up, my passion for up wind-up machines and shellac records only grew,” says Mathew, 65.
At 30, he started collecting gramophones and records, and by 2012, when he retired as a divisional manager in the Kerala Forest Development Corporation, he had collected over 100,000 records and 300 gramophones. The same year, he took his collection for an exhibition.
“The two-day exhibition was always packed with visitors. Many of them, to my surprise, had not seen a gramophone in their lives. That is when I thought of opening a gramophone museum,” says Mathew. “I discussed it with my wife, who readily agreed, hoping that it will free up a lot of space at home.”
So, in 2015, he set up Discs and Machines, India’s first gramophone museum in Plassanal in Kerala’s Kottayam district, spending ₹35 lakh. “I invested my life’s savings,” he said.
The 3,500-square feet museum spread over two floors has on display over a 100,000 records — 75% of them shellac discs; the rest are cardboard, cylinder and vinyl records, which he has painstakingly collected over decades from antique dealers and stores in India and abroad. The shelves have been labelled and categorised according to language and genres. The museum has records in both Indian and foreign languages, including English, German, French, and Italian.
Among the oldest records in the museum are from E Berliner’s label, dating to 1898. Then there are wax cylinder records from the 1890s, including a BBC English correspondence course record. “It is perhaps the oldest audio correspondence course ,” says Mathew.
The second floor has over 300 gramophones of different models — box-type, suitcase-type, table-top, cabinet ones, pocket type, walkman- type. There are also rare phonographs, the predecessors of gramophones. While most are of wellknown brands such as HMV, Columbia and Thorens, there are many locally produced gramophones under brand names such as Gana Phone, Senola, Jay-o – Phone, Seetha phones and Mega Phones.
“Most local brands were based in
Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata and started manufacturing in the 1930s, bringing down the prices of gramophones. They imported parts from Switzerland, Germany and Japan and assembled it in India. In the 1950s, they sold gramophones for ₹50 to ₹80, half the price of the cheapest models of big brands,” says Mathew.
“I have bought a lot of gramophones, records and needles from shops in Chandni Chowk, which used to be a hub of gramophone manufacturers,” he says.
The museum boasts an 1897 phonograph manufactured by American Gramophone Company, and the oldest gramophone is from 1908 — an HMV (model LBDM), which Mathew bought from Chennai for ₹25, 000. “The price of vintage horn gramophones has gone up. The old gramophones that I bought for ₹5,000 15 years ago today cost ₹60,000.
The museum, he says, gets about 1,000 visitors a year. It holds an annual seminar on subjects relating to gramophone and records.
Among the visitors to the museum include Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu, and former Norwegian ambassador to India Arne Walther.“most visitors are from outside Kerala. They are music lovers, and not casual visitors,” says Mathew.