In 1876, Seefeldt had a display at the Philadelphia Exposition and below is a photo of their display and a card that came out later with comments from famous players of the day. The instruments that I have come across so far don't seem to share much for design styles but perhaps over time I will see a pattern emerge once I see more of them. By the time this cornet was made, William Seefeldt may have been semi-retired and doing custom work so perhaps this was made by his hand. When I got this, I had never seen another cornet with the decorative plates that this has with the sea shells or fans. He was likely the original owner but I have found no trace of a musician with this name. The second mystery is the name 'Albert Schweigart' on the bell. The first mystery with this horn is the presence of two mounting tabs on the lead pipe for what? They appear original and even have the decorative backing plates. The only missing part is the broken off lyre holder. With some new corks and a good cleaning, this old cornet is working again.

I was surprised at the very modern looking valve springs that are internal on top with a triple tooth valve guide. There are some areas of worn plating but it plays pretty well. After three rounds of polishing I was able to get it looking good again. It may look nasty but I could tell that it was all there with nothing missing. The bottom tubing on the tuning slide has such a different tarnish that I would suspect that it had been replaced at one time.

I thought there might be some bad plating areas but was not sure until I cleaned it up. It looked pretty rough when I got it but mostly that was due to the severe tarnish to the silver plating. Here is a rare cornet made by the Seefeldt Musical Instrument Manufacturing Company in about 1900.

Restoring olds cornet