I'm grateful to Peter Jourdain for bringing this auction to my notice - Ebay Item No 280355971483
The frame, advertised as a fast tourer, complete with pannier bosses, is certainly one that I built but, for the life in me, I cannot actually remember this one in any detail.
The seller lives in Blackburn, a small city in east lancashire, about 30 miles from my workshop in Settle. It was, until the 1970s, a typical thriving textile town, and the home to hundreds of cyclists who used bikes for their daily commuting to and from the mills. Then the imports of clothing started to arrive from the Far East, the mills closed down..and Blackburn never recovered.
The city is also the home of the Blackburn CTC..an exemplary highly disciplined outfit, whose members still all ride steel-framed hand-built frames with mudguards and who still use Carradice or Karrimor saddle bags - both firms were about five or six miles from Blackburn- on their Sunday club runs..and who spend two weekend in each month visiting Youth Hostels. It's just like the Good Old days of cycling, as depicted on that short film on YouTube (or whatever its called ) when this Club hits the back roads to the Yorkshire Dales...with not a continental trade team jersey in sight.
I suspect that the frame on Ebay was one that I built for a Club member..and it is not so much a touring bike in the sense of a randonneuse, just a responsive fast club or day bike that would carry the panniers during the annual summer cycling holiday.
The frame is typically unfussy and uncluttered...no superfluous braze-ons or reinforcement tangs on the rear bridges that might catch up mud..and possibly rust...from the.form follows function school of frame-building.
The frame is small and square at 20.5 inches , and uses Rizzato short point lugs and a Haden crown. The frame looks original with no newly added-on braze-ons ie mudguard eyes..and so I am puzzled that the owner/purchaser specified the front fork tangs and the fork crown and top-eye engravings. Club cyclists generally eschewed such embellishments. But there again, at Bespoke..the customer always gets what they ask for..or at least within reason..
The seller says he thinks the frame is from around 1988...but I think it might be just a few years earlier..perhaps 84/85. The headset is stated to be a COBRA (Italian and very good quality) If you look carefully you will see the name GELIANO engraved in the headset. These were made for Geliano in France by Cobra..and I bought them from him...and this one is original.
The transfers are interesting in that the owner has chosen the copper-plate one, what I called my Club style, for the down-tube, and the Art Deco, or should that be Art Nouveau one for the head-tube. I think that that choice would be dictated by the shortness of the head tube, although I am surprised that it doesn't have the photo-etched stainless steel headbadge as most Club riders opted for that device. Well...after almost a quarter of a century ..I still think it looks an attractive frameset..with many more fast day rides yet to be logged.
I hope that the new owner will really enjoy riding it.
Norris Lockley..Settle UK