Been having problems with my email reception recently...so I am a bit out of touch, although I did manage to get the CR lead to the films showing the building of RIH frames in Holland. Wonderful stuff.
Equally wonderful..no more so..were the frames built by Andre Reiss, in Lyon, in the 1930s, under the brand name of REYHAND.
There are very few of these about, and Jan Heine seems to have cornered the market with photos of three or four excellent ones in his book The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles..
However I know that I have one, possibly two, and maybe even three ! What I dont have is information - hence this second appeal to the CR List, my first being about a year ago...and no one replied ON or OFF -List.
This could well be ascribed to the fact that no one really knows much at all about Reiss - I have quite a lot of contacts with serious randonneur cyclists who live in and around Lyon, but none of them know anything about Reiss....Charrel, Longoni, Marcadier..Yes! but Reiss/Reyhand ..a big No !
Since last year I have spent some time fettling up my dust and grease encrusted barn-find and actually found the frame number. It is No 1351. Now...having scrutinised all the photos that I have collected of other Reyhands, I am convinced that mine is older than those..and they dated from 1936 and 1938.
Reiss started building, or at least opened his shop in 1933, and was deported and killed by the German army in the early 40s. He was a custom-builder whose frames commanded high prices...so I reckon that one way or another he did not build all that many.
This train of reckoning makes me think that my frame, No 1351. is the eleventh frame built in 1935. It could be a coincidence I suppose, and the frame could have been the one- thousand-three-hundreth-and-fifty-first one that Reiss built. But I don't think so.
What I am trying to find out from the List, and I think that are two or three Reyhand owners on the LIst, is..does anyone know and understand Reiss's numbering system?
I have posted some photos of the old wreck..no it's not too bad..at
http://www.flickr.com/
Norris Lockley, Settle UK