Maple Music Boxes. Some of the larger maple species have valuable timber, particularly Sugar maple in North America, and Sycamore maple in Europe. Sugar maple wood—often known as “hard maple”—is the wood of choice for bowling pins, bowling alley lanes, pool cue shafts, and butcher’s blocks. Maple wood is also used for the manufacture of wooden baseball bats, though less often than ash or hickory due to the tendency of maple bats to shatter if they do break. The maple bat was introduced to Major League Baseball (MLB) in 1998 by Sam Bat founder Sam Holman. Today it is the standard maple bat most in use by professional baseball. Maple is also commonly used in archery as the core material in the limbs of a recurve bow due to its stiffness and strength.
Maple wood is often graded based on physical and aesthetic characteristics. The most common terminology includes the grading scale from common #2; which is unselected and often used for craft woods; common #1, used for commercial and residential buildings; clear; and select grade, which is sought for fine woodworking.
Some maple wood has a highly decorative wood grain, known as flame maple, quilt maple, birdseye maple and burl wood. This condition occurs randomly in individual trees of several species, and often cannot be detected until the wood has been sawn, though it is sometimes visible in the standing tree as a rippled pattern in the bark.
These select decorative wood pieces also have subcategories that further filter the aesthetic looks. Crotch Wood, Bees Wing, Cats Paw, Old Growth and Mottled are some terms used to describe the look of these decorative woods.
Maples have a long history of use for furniture production in the United States. Reference: Wikipedia
Below are some examples of music boxes made from maple.
Music box plays metal disks, and includes one Regina 15-1/2″ disk. The box is beautiful bird’s eye maple wood. Coin mechanism is intact. Condition: Dimensions: 9 – 1/2″ x 24″ x 19″.
Sold for $950 at Dan Morphy Auctions in 2019
A Swiss rosewood and maple inlaid cylinder drum bells wood block and organ music box, late 19th century mechanism playing with a 35.5cm cylinder one of eight tunes as listed on the tune sheet, on a double comb, accompagnied by a drum, seven saucer bells, a wood block and an organ mounted below in the rosewood and maple veneered case with ebonized borders and ornate brass hinged handles, marquetry inlay of musical instruments to the front and top length 74cm
Sold for 6,000 EUR at Sotheby’s in 2007
A modern Swiss music box by Reuge Music bird’s eye maple, mahogany and ebonised case of cartouche form, mother of pearl inlaid floral detail, playing three airs, titled to inside lid, 27cm in width, 9cm in height.
Sold for £ 162 inc. premium at Bonham’s in 2013
A SWISS BURR MAPLE AND EBONISED WOOD INTERCHANGEABLE-CYLINDER MUSIC BOX LATE 19TH CENTURY The case with brass handles and bone escutcheon playing one cylinder with six airs, and with two further interchangeable cylinders, with zither attachment 30 ½ in. (77.5 cm.) wide
Sold for GBP 2,250 at Christie’s in 2014
