Chocolate Radio

Hello Radiophiles,

This week my sister Luisa hosted a birthday party for me, and surprised me with a wonderful birthday cake decorated with a hand-made chocolate radio.

As you can see on the cake, it has a very musical tone! Judjing by the general appearance, it seems to be from the 1930's, perhaps American.

The radio was made with light and dark melted chocolate, using a technique reminisdent of cloisonné, or reverse painting on glass.

The radio was painted face-down on smooth surface, that may have been flexible for easy removal after cooling. The dark lines were drawn first to delineate the design, then the light and brown chocolate zones were filled in. It seems that the light chocolate was applied first. The medium brown chocolate was extended below the radio to serve as stake.

Sis comissioned this cake for my 50th birthday, but it is not the first time that she surprised me with a radio-themed birthday cake. The first time was many, many years ago, for my 17th birthday. Back then the radio was a Crystal set, represented schematically with fine line cake frosting. Hmm, come to think of it she chose models that were quite age-appropriate!

My question is for suggestions for what tube radio most resembles this wonderful flight of fancy. It would also be interesting to see other fanciful representations of radios.

Thank you all for indulging my inquiry,

-Joe

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Hello Joe,

i think thats a new model, please create this on RMorg.

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Here, perhaps?  Looks Atwaterish!

Roy

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Hello Hans and Roy,

Thank you very much for entertaining my extravagance and for your good wishes.

The likeness to the 1934 Atwater-Kent 206 is very striking. Roy, I think you have positively identified the radio. I counted all the principal features and they are all there.

The only significant difference that I detect is that the knob count is 2, instead of 4. This could answer Hans's question. I think the chocolate radio only has BC.

Thank you for joining me in this bit of good-natured fun.

-Joe

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Dear  Joe,

I also want to congratulate you for your 50th anniversary.

To commemorate I only could manage here a virtual image, overlaying  a virtual cake on a 50ties radio. I kow that this is worthless, but I hope you like it . The intention is all. Isn't it?

I wish you the best.

Greetings form a Radiophile,

Mario

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Dear Mario,

Thank you very much for your kind wishes! I love the cake on the radio. It is the perfect blend of humor and radio hobby that I so much enjoy.

However, even your imaginative creation reminds of something about these old radios. The cake is on a doily (naperon). These pieces of ornamental crochet or embroidered cloth often adorned radios when I was growing up in Lisbon.

Even more specifically for radio use, there were some specially made to measure cloth covers to protect the radio from the dust. They looked like a fitted cloth curtain over the radio. They were usualy constructed with a flat top, and a frilled curtain-like cloth hanged down all sides of the radio. Sometimes the front cloth was perfectly flat, and you could see the glow of the dial lamps through it. These covers, as far as I know were always home made.

Regards,

-Joe

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Dear Joe

I was not able yet to find out one Radio with  a naperon on it. I think I'll be able later.

Meanwhile, the image of a covered radio, made me remember that we have a nostalgic film scene of an hidden radio that I'm sure you will be very glad to see again.

You can see it in aminharadio a very good portuguese oldradios site.

http://www.aminharadio.com/radio/node/876/play

Meanwhile, as I had promissed above, I got one picture of a napron on a radio took out  from an episode of a very good TV series about a Portuguese family during the sixties. "conta-me como foi".

http://img.rtp.pt/wportal/sites/tv/conta_me/imagens/galeria/foto5.JPG

You can see more in: http://tv1.rtp.pt/multimedia/index.php?tvprog=20133&idpod=27620&formato=flv&pag=recentes&escolha=

Enjoy

Regards

Mário

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Dear Mario,

Thanks for finding these wonderful slices of life in the Portugal of my youth.

You are right, I enjoyed very much seeing the BW movie clip at the first link you posted. It clearly ilustrates the place of radio in Portugal around 1940. I remember the actors quite well.

I had seen an episode, a few months ago, of  "Conta-me como foi" [Tell me how it was] while visiting my mother in Fall River MA-USA. Her cable service includes one channel of RTPI (Radio Televisão Portuguesa Internacional). This is perhaps her favorite show on RTPI. She is from the same generation as the parents in the family. I will have to tell her that some episodes are available on-line. Every few months, I remember to go to the RTP site and see what is on the on-line broadcast of RTPI. What I would realy like to catch more often is Hermano Saraiva's very interesting historic travel documentaries throughout Portugal. But I am a fairly frequent listener to the Antena2 Radio channel of RTP. It is particularly nice to listen to it in the evening in the USA while it is after mid-night in Lisbon. This makes for very few interuptions in the music broadcast. The quality of the erudite/classical music programming on Antena2 is excellent.

I wonder if we still have somewhere in a drawer, the old cloth cover for the 1965 Nordmende Elektra 6-612 at our summer home in Furnas-S.Miguel-Azores. This is the radio where we "saw" the Apollo 11 Lunar landing 40 years ago. I have the radio with me, in the USA, in working condition, now I will have to look for the cloth cover next time I go to the Azores.

Regards,

-Joe

f

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Does anybody know this model? :-)

Gabriel

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