Quote Originally Posted by Schuyler View Post
Hey, all. It's been too long! The collection I'm working with right now spans thousands of years, so I figured I would toss it here in Pre-Industrial (though several of the items are squarely made in the industrial revolution or even post-industrial). A bit of background, or just skip to the end for the link to the Flickr Album.

In January of last year I was attending a conference in Chicago where I met the head of acquisitions for the Museum of Science & Industry. She happened to overhear me talking locks with someone and introduced herself. She told me that the museum had just been approached by a widow who wanted to donate her husband's lock collection, but that they didn't really know what to do with it, or if they should bother. All I knew at the time was that he was an employee of Yale & Towne. Being that I have a very specific interest in Y&T (distant relation to the T) I put on the best show I could to convince her to acquire the locks. Then, I heard nothing for a year. This January I was back in Chicago for the same conference when I received an email saying that the locks had been acquired, and it wasn't just Yale locks, but a huge collection of locks from around the world over the past couple thousand years, and would I like to come unbox them for a small audience.
In January 1990, I went to work for Yale as the Key Records Manager at their world headquarters in Monroe, NC. On the second or third day there I was given the grand tour by the curator of the collection, (which was displayed in glass cases in the hallways), who was also in charge of the physical plant. The collection was extensive. Some of the highlights were the 8 masterpiece locks, various locks and padlocks with unique mechanisms, and an Egyptian style door lock inlaid with gold and mother of pearl that was said to be from the palace of Hadrian, (yes, the one of the wall around 1400 BC). At the end of the tour he asked me what I thought it was all worth and I told him around $200,000.00. He said they had a professional appraiser evaluate it 2 years earlier who came up with the same value. If everything were still there I’m sure the value has doubled by now. The curator also showed me an itemized inventory of the collection then so I find it hard to believe that the collection was ever broken up to the extent you have been told.

The Yale & Towne lock collection was obtained from the daughter of an Austrian Count Andreas Dillinger. The Count was famous for having the most important collection in Europe. A world famous locksmith from New York City, Charles Courtney, arranged the sale after the Count’s death in order that the collection would have a safe home in the US. That was around 1937 and the daughter was worried by the rumors of impendingwar. You can verify that and even get a partial listing of the locks in the collection from his book “Unlocking Adventure”.

There were also a number of safe deposit locks and other older Yale products on display in glass cases but to me the product literature and catalogs that filed around 8 three foot bookshelves in one of the hallways.

The curator told me that through the years and different owners of the company some of the executives had taken some of the medieval door locks and installed them in the houses in the Monroe/Charlotte, NC area. He said there were also some locks in boxes in a store room but I didn’t get to see them.

In 1991 Yale was purchased by Williams Holding of England and I was transferred to the plant in Lenoir City, TN to get the key milling and bitting departments running smooth. About six months later one of my people back in Monroe told me that one of the Williams managers had the shelves with the literature and catalogs thrown into the dumpster.

Later Yale was purchased by ASSA Abloy and I was told recently that the collection has been moved to CT. The person didn’t know if it was to the old Corbin plant or to the Sargent plant. ASSA Abloy owns both of them.
BBE.