Category Archives: colors

Stealing The Words

Let’s talk about the color pink.

First of all we have 4 different colors of pink: Dusty Rose, Riviera, Princess Pink and Petal Pink. There is an interesting story on the latter two, Princess and Petal Pink.

Princess Pink (left) and Petal Pink (right)

In the beginning there was a color named Princess Pink. It sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale, but no prince is expected to drop in here. And it does not turn out too good in the end for this this American princess. The color palette in the USA, where she was part of, consisted of 18 different colors as you can see in this previous post. Petal Pink did not yet exist at this time.

In the early 1960’s (~1961) it was decided that North Electric could produce all Ericofons for the US market. One year before (~1960) the New Case was introduced. At this time it was also decided that the US color palette was to be reduced from 18 to 8 colors. Ten colors disappeared but Princess Pink was swapped out by her new rival Petal Pink. Petal even stole Princess’ color code (520541). This code is now applicable for both colors…

There could be different reasons for this swap of pink that took place. Maybe the Princess Pink was not such a popular color. This is most likely also the reason of 10 colors disappearing. Or it was to avoid confusion with the Bell System “Princess phone” marketed by Western Electric, which was getting popular as well at that time.

So the result of this story is that the following models are available: Petal Pink in only New Case (both, flat and wedge). There was never an Old Case produced as the swap was done the moment new cases already existed. Princess Pink exists in all 3 cases. But the New Case (wedge) not from US production, only from other markets (e.g. Sweden). From both colors there is also a Touch Tone version available.

If you ask me, my favorite is the Princess. Petal is the bad mother-in-law.

Circulating

Over the years I have collected quite some Ericofons already. In that process of collecting I also got double models. I even get offered to buy small series from people who want to get rid of it (which I do not understand 😉 ).

In the meantime I really started to appreciate to turn old, dirty and sticky Ericofons into shiny like new models. All in original state, shiny, clean and working. It is a very satisfying activity. But it is also time and effort consuming.

Above is an impression of my ‘circulating library’. All models are still raw from the box, just as I received them. Everything circulates through from time to time: regular models, 700’s, Old Cases, Touch Tones, NOS etc, complete or not.

So if you have any Ericofons that you want to get rid off, either for my collection or for me to ‘re-animate’, please contact me. I am always interested to buy and I am sure we can work something out.

Colour…

After I created the menu item ‘Colors’ for color identification I thought it would be good to elaborate a bit on the color Candle Glow. As said there, it is difficult to make colors visible online but I’ll try to show the 2 different Candle Glows here.

Candle Glow 520553North Electric NC
Candle GlowOC and LME NC

As already said, the New Case Candle Glow has two color variants. The North Electric (NE) is a bit more gray-brown. The Swedish (LME) Candle Glow is more ivory-yellow. The picture in the left shows the subtle difference.

In the second picture I tried to show the translucent/opaque aspect of those 2 colors. With the same light from the front of the phones, you can see that the LME type is for sure more translucent than its NE twin.

The difference is for New Case models only. Old Cases are always LME like.

To be clear, both phones used in this post, do not have any discoloring. Not all phones are identical. The same color produced in different factories might differ a bit. And of course, over time colors changes. Usually you can see the original tone of color on the inside of the shell, never exposed to direct sunlight and/or smoke.

On Balance

In the company where I work we have an art game ongoing at the moment. The theme is Diversity and Inclusion, related to the professional working environment of course. Employees are asked to make art around that theme.

As we have many employees from different backgrounds, in all sorts of ways, this is a very important topic to us within the company. Differences, and the embracement of the awareness of it, make us strong.

Inspired by this game, but not yet knowing if I will participate, I took my camera and started to make some pictures today. A few of them I can already share with you here.

My personal experience is that diversity in teams with colleagues and customers makes everything well balanced. For me this is not only about roots, gender or age, but much broader than that.

We are all different and yet so much the same. 

Autumn Equinox II

Last year we had a warm autumn and on the edge of winter I was able to purchase my Old Case Dusty Rose. Still one of the most fabulous colors in the Ericofon range if you ask me.  Are you? 😉 The warmth of the rose-pink color is just so intense.

Around one year later, we have a warm autumn again, and another Dusty Rose popped up. A New Case flat this time and I am actually expecting it to arrive this week.

On top of that, and on the same day I was getting things arranged for the Dusty Rose, I ran in on a New Case Nordic Blue… that is at least what I think it will be. Like with the post on the disclaimer I am not sure on the color for this one.

It is so hard to buy from the screen only. But as this was an opportunity that I had to act on quickly I took the chance. The price was okay for that. The seller was refering to it as ‘liteblue’ but also had an Aqua Mist for sale…  So let’s hope that this surprise is a nice one but it can still be a Wedgewood or an Aqua Mist anyway. It is from the same seller as the Riviera on the ‘disclaimer’ post. Crappy pictures that turn out to be right…?

So maybe this autumn is a turning point in my collection with 2 rare New Case models in one week. Of course I will post some new and decent pictures once they are in the house. The ones above are from the sellers.

Update 06/11/2017:

A real beauty next to her older sister (Hmm, I smell a touch of exaggeration here… I have kids so why am I saying this 😉 )

Update 14/11/2017:

A real beauty next to his older brother (I am doing it again)… The expected phone is indeed a Nordic Blue. Great!! I am done for this year.

Both Nordic Blue models have a slightly different color tone. The Old Case is a bit more grayed overtime. I guess the Old Case suffered a bit more in the years it was exposed to sun and perhaps smoke. The New Case is more sparkling, which is relatively in this case since the blue is not that exuberant.  The insides are similarly colored, the New Case has code 520542 inside.

Rosa Decidua

In my never ending search for new models I am exploring all the corners of vintage stores, second hand shops, flea markets and the internet. There I encounter many different Ericofons.

Some are in good shape, some are in bad shape. Sometimes you see surprises and nice to haves, and sometimes you run into very, very ugly Ericofons: painted.

If the color of your Ericofon might not be your favorite color (anymore), I can agree that you want to paint it. But then I would prefer a one color version and not a pattern. Patterns, hmm, I don’t know. See also the post on the other creative activity: ugly lights.

Besides the painting in a different color, you also find very creative utterings. Floral Ericofons are rather common, for some reason the Ericofon invites people to think about flowers. Below are 2 examples from the net of floral design that go far beyond painting only…

If both phones where decorated by the same person, I do not know. But there is a sort of resemblance. Coincidence or a natural way of putting flowers on the shape?

After showing these floral phone pictures to my daughers they were inspired and asked me for a shell as well to get rid of their creative energy. Since I had one left that could not be saved anymore I gave it to them. See the result below. Surprisingly a non floral design. Actually I like it, but I might be a bit prejudiced.

This is the only smart-Ericofon as far as I know. It runs the most recent ‘Safari’ version without problems. Apple should like it. 😉

Update 22/07/2023: It just doesn’t stop…

The Golden Hare With A Voice Of Silver

Today I received an extraordinary box in the mail, containing three DIY shells.

The Chrome Plated in the middle is in fact a complete shell, this one I will complete to a nice shining silver Ericofon. The other shells are Gold Plated, not to be confused with the Aztec types. Unfortunately both shells do not have the original gold plated earcap anymore so I had put in white ones for the picture. Let’s see if I can get them painted somewhere in the ‘cheapest-shinyest-chinese-plastic-toy-gold-color’ that exists. The shells are all NOS, but they have some wear from bad storage.

goldsilvertrio1goldsilvertrio2

Both Gold Plated will become part of my collection, one with a wedge and the other with a flat earpiece.

Putting a phone together is not the biggest challenge anymore, but getting the  earcaps in the right color will be. See it as a guide for beginners or maybe a guide for finishers.

Update 07/08/2016:

This weekend I have completed the 2 Gold Plated phones. In the box with spare parts I had two complete sets of North Electric stuff. Including a flat and wedge earcap.

Gold1

Earlier I have informed at several places, including professional painters, the best way to finish the earcaps. Or to have them professionally finished. The result was that all parties did not guarantee the exact color. Gold seems to be quite difficult. You can also see that both shells have a different gold color. The original surface is also very sensitive to e.g. (acid) fingerprints.

So in the end I bought some recommended paint and decided to go for it myself. First some experiments took place on a scrapped shell. Just to make sure the right combination of paint and distance. The result is actually not bad. It is not as shiny as the original but it comes very close.

In the process of getting the Aztec Gold in better shape there is no progress. It is very hard to get the color AND structure right. Not sure if I will succeed there.

Gold3Gold2

A nice detail about the gold and chrome plated shells: they actually conduct electricity. While testing one of the phones a wire on the inside made contact to the shell. When I pickup the phone, I felt it ringing… It is approximately 60 Volts so nobody was hurt 😉

Wrong Eye

In the past few weeks I obtained 2 rather hard to get colors: an Old Case Nordic Blue and New Case (flat) Riviera.

With a ‘wrong eye’ you can sometimes not determine the exact color of the phones, especially when you buy phones online. Certain colors are hard to photograph: the light, the camera, the monitor, it is all influencing what you see in the end. Not 100% but pretty sure, I discovered some special phones a few weeks ago. Both phones did not have a color code inside, so they could not be checked upfront with the vendors. But I decided to buy them anyway and take the chance. And I did have a ‘good eye’ this time. Both were as expected.

For color reference I made a few pictures to see the difference between the Nordic and Riviera and the closest colors in their range.

Riviera

From left to right and top to bottom: Petal Pink, Princess Pink, Riviera, Taj Mahal. The Riviera is a bonish pink, getting close to Taj Mahal.

Nordic

From left to right and top to bottom: Persian Gray, Taj Mahal, Nordic Blue. Actually the Nordic Blue is not so very blue if you compare it with Wedgewood or Aqua Mist. It is more a light gray with a blue tinge.

Both colors I had never seen before other than on pictures. As I am not into pink that much, I do not really like the Riviera, however, the Nordic Blue is a very nice pale blue color, beautiful!

Dark Start

Sometimes phones are yellowed over time. Because of the sunlight or because of a heavy poluted environment in a smokers home. Smoke has the most equal discoloring, sunlight is more capricious. You will be surprised how much a phone can be discolored. White turns to yellow, Sahara becomes Harvest Gold and Wedgewood looks brown/green. Terrible, and it hurts to see this.grayyellow

Normally I will sand those phones, remove the polution by removing the upper layer of the phones’ surface. You can see it in the picture above where the side has been sanded (not polished) and the back is not yet done.

A few weeks ago I read an article on ‘bleaching’ phones with Hydrogen Peroxide. Some collectors seems to have some good experiences with this. Time for an experiment so I bought myself a litre of this stuff…

bleach0

It is Hydrogen Peroxide, 12%. This bottle I got from an online hairshop for about 12 USD and is to be used by professionals. It is also called ‘developer’. After shocking my family that it was to be used on my own hair, I told them the actual purpose.

Normally the cosmetic grades are from 3% to 12% maximum. When you have over 50% you have bought rocket fuel 🙂 The relation between % and Vol seems to be linear: 3% = 10 Vol, 6% = 20 Vol, etc. 10 Vol means that 10 times its original volume in oxygen will be released.

And… it is a gel/cream, not a liquid. Otherwise it will drop of your phone right away.

Picking a candidate phone was quite easy. I wanted to start with just a little risk for the first time. So a ‘not too strong equally discolored PTT White phone’ was the subject. Here’s a picture of the victim: the second from the right. The one on the left is pretty close to Taj Mahal, the one on the right is closer to Candle Glow.

bleach1

bleach2

As Hydrogen Peroxide works best when you increase the environmental temperature I decided to put the phone in a box. In front of the box I put a 200W lamp which got pretty hot.

The cream was applied on the phone in a thick layer with a brush. So thick that it just not starts to drip off.

After 4 hours I was so curious and decided to get the phone out and to see the result of the work done sofar.

The result was not too bad, but I noticed that the phone was discolored in certain areas. The result can be seen below. As the lamp was 20 to 25 cm from the box, there was a strong heat source from one side of the phone. What I noticed was that the phone was getting whiter on the side of the lamp, and not on the ‘dark side’. Also the cream did its work better where it was applied thicker. So some stains were the result which can be seen here.

bleach3

In the second setup, to have a less focussed/bundled heat source, I decided to have the phone on top of a radiator. The heat, being warm air, in this case is going up, equally spread on all sides of the phone. But the phone not being in a box desiccated the cream. The result after another 4 hours was pretty good. The back of the phone was lighter than before, most of the stains had disappeared. So equally applied heat is better than a strong source. Maybe an oven would work best…

The last and final experiment was inside a box, on the radiator. Again I applied a thick layer of cream on the phone, closed the box and left it there for another 6 hours. The temperature in the box had raised to 43 Celcius (109  Fahrenheit) when I came back.

bleach4

The result is actually quite good. The cream was not fully dry, on the inside of the box some moist could be seen. The final result can be seen in the pictures below. Not bad at all!!

bleach5bleach6

As already said in previous posts, it is hard to make pictures of colors exact as they are in reality. But this row of phones is the same as the ‘before’ picture. So there is quite a difference as you can see on the second from the right. It is close the Taj Mahal now, 2 tones lighter than before. The surface of the phone is shiny and smooth, no damage done at all.

The next candidates are already in the oven, ready to be cooked. A Taj Mahal and a Persian Gray. Both heavily discolored because of the sunlight.

Update 17/03/2016:

The Taj Mahal just came out of the ‘Ericoven’ and the result is shown below. In both pictures the Taj Mahal is on the right. The phone on the left is a Candle Glow in both cases. Actually I first thought that the Taj Mahal was a Candle Glow, until it came out of the oven…

candlewhite1candlewhite2

The advantage of oxygen based cleaning is that it is non-toxic and eco friendly. Chlorine products, which can also be used, are extremely toxic and harmful to the environment. On top of that, they tend to be detrimental to fabrics over time.

Seen the success of this method I bought some more of this stuff. Coincidently I ran into this truck this evening. Howmany phones could one clean with 30,000 litres? 🙂

h2o2

Please note that white and gray Ericofons are a success until now. Pink is a more difficult color and bleeches out to a lighter shade, I recently messed up one. So be carefull what you do and do not use this on your most precious phone before knowing exactly what the effect is.

Update 09/05/2016:

Last weekend I cleaned a Sandalwood shell. After the bad experience with the pink one, I decided to do sessions of 1 to 2 hours, depending on the heat (sunlight this time, it was 25 degrees Celsius 🙂 ). After a session I washed the phone and checked the effect. Four sessions were needed for this one and the result is great. It is good to intermediate check the status and wash off the old cream. This time I applied the cream in a thin film on the shell, not too much. The result: just great!!

Triple Sun Two

If you’ve read through this blog you might already know something about the Dutch PTT trio that was marketed in the aftermath of the Ericofon lifecycle. Initially it was planned to sell the Ericofon in The Netherlands from 1979 to 1981, but that turned out to be until 1985 in the end. This was not because of the popularity of the phone, but due to the fact that the Dutch PTT had a huge stock that needed to be sold. And that was not so easy, so 4 more years were needed ‘to get rid’ of these phones.

The landscape in telecom-land was as follows at the end of the seventies: the Dutch state owned PTT was a monopolist. They were not keen on having ‘external’ phones on their network, so it was only ‘allowed’ to have PTT certified phones connected. They would tell you it was forbidden but in fact legally there was not an issue to do this. And this was also the time where you could buy all kind of fancy phones in all kind of stores. A huge contrast with the ‘dull’ PTT product range that was available. So this rushed the PTT into the salvation model, the Ericofon.

Actually, the Ericofon was also evaluated in the late 60’s as a potential phone for the PTT customers, but it was not selected. From old newspapers it can be concluded that Ericsson directly sold Ericofons to PTT customer in 1969 despite the fact it was not PTT certified. This explains some ‘strange’ Dutch models that I have seen in the past.

PTT Folder 1-3

The Ericofon was not very popular in The Netherlands, but the PTT needed an already existing model that could fill the gap between the good old Ericsson T65 and its successor, the Ericsson Diavox and Unifoon (with pushbuttons). The T65 was at the end of its life and the latter were to be issued in 1981 to celebrate 100 years of telephony in The Netherlands. Also financially it was not a good period for the PTT the in the late 70’s. So the company chose an existing phone but managed to create some unique models in the limited time frame they had. The colors red and brown are unique in the world and the white is similar to the Taj Mahal. However, the black dial face for all 3 colors is unique as well.

PTT Folder 2-3

PTT Folder 3-3

In this post is a scan of the original leaflet that was made by the PTT.  The sharp reader of this blog can see that the pictures date from before 1979. The black dial face made in the first batch ordered in 1978 was not yet foreseen with the letters PTT. Instead a sticker on the inside of the shell was placed with the same indication. Introduction was done on January 16th 1979 in Amsterdam and Haarlem and on April 1st 1979 in the rest of the country.

PTTsticker

Not only the outside of the Dutch models are unique, also the inside was specifically designed for this operator. A typical printed circuit board with the color coding of the wires printed completes this phone. Although this chassis will work in most countries, it complies to the specific (high) demands from the Dutch operator on network connectivity.

PTTChassis

Where the speaker is standard and glued into the ear-piece, the microphone is also typical PTT.

When it comes to the amounts of Dutch models it is expected that the following orders were placed at Ericsson: 20.000 in 1978, 60.000 in 1979 and 20.000 in 1980 which makes a total of 100.000 Ericofons.