Enough to make a grown man CRY like a BABY :-( AKA Ray's Colored AE Find!

[AE_Collector]

Yes you have been busy Ray! I still recall chatting with you via email when you were just starting to investigate the possibility of casting replacement colored bodies for AE phones. A job well done I would say!

Terry

[GG]

Hi Ray - yes I am notoriously bad about remembering and matching names; it runs in the family; appears to be a non-obvious dyslexic symptom.  (blush!)  And I'd just pulled an all-nighter troubleshooting a PBX problem for a client (turned out to be a carrier issue, grr grr grr) so all day Thursday I was pretty brain-mushed. 

Your original works in color are also enough to make a grown man cry.  And the best incentive to get my billing cycle under control and a summer's worth of back invoices sent out. 

Lilac: probably the only "purple" phones in mainstream telco history in the US, about which an interesting story.  Milton Erickson MD, PhD, was a psychiatrist who had a major influence in a number of areas of clinical psychology in the US.  Due to a childhood illness, he was color-blind except that he could see the color purple and various shades and variations of it.  At one point one of his students managed to get him a telephone in purple, which required serious effort back in the day.  That might have been a repainted 500 set.  But here's me wondering if he might not have found an AE set in lilac back in the 70s.  Hmm...   Psychologists who've studied Erickson's work in depth probably all know the "purple telephone" story, so here's me thinking some of them might appreciate lilac AEs in their offices. 

Ray, what do you think of selling sets of "color sample chips" in the standard colors you use, so people can check them out under their own lighting conditions before deciding on colors?   I've noticed that lighting has a major effect in rendering colors darker or lighter: a Mexican Ericsson that looks bright green in the sun, looks halfway to GPO concorde blue indoors; and a Russian VEF that looks turquoise in the sun looks almost fluorescent blue indoors. 

For example your color maroon, looks perfect for a kind of tastefully-understated version of "the red phone", but depending on lighting, might appear brighter or darker or more toward violet or something.  I can imagine similar differences for other colors, that could be addressed with the color chips.   

[ESalter]

All of those look amazing Ray!  My favorite is the white swirl(marble looking) AE40.  It's hard to imagine the total of how much of your time and skill are represented in those photos.  I'm just curious, what type of phone was the most difficult to cast?  Are AE40s difficult with the vent holes in the sides?  ---Eric