The viewers pictured below would, at first glance,
easily be mistaken for a Sawyers Model C, however, closer inspection
reveals that it is a TELE-VISEX, manufactured by Alto-Relevo in Brazil in
the 1950's and carrying the patent number 213133. It's construction was
from bakelite. The viewer weighed in at 220g, against the Sawyers
Model C's weight of 188g.
Whilst clones of
viewers are often inferior to the model they were copied from, this
particular viewer had a major advantage over the Model C, in that it's
body was held together by a set of four screw and nuts. This allowed the
viewer to be opened in the event that dust had entered the viewer and it
required cleaning. The address of the manufacturer was
Floriano Scattolin & Irmãos
Avenida São João 25 - São Paulo Industria Brasileira.
The example shown below is believed to be a later variation of the model
above. Notice the red advance lever and how the bolts are black, as
opposed to the chromed nuts and metal lever above.
A closer view of the two types of advance lever and nut
side by side.
Reels produced for the viewer above carry the name
Alto-Relevo. The disks themselves are made from pressed card and do not
have the aluminium centre as do Sawyers reels. The pictures fade to
magenta as they did not use Kodachrome film.
 
Many of the reel subjects were direct
copies from the Sawyers range and even used the same numbering system. An
example is show below, FT-8, the Sawyers version is titled, "Little Black
Sambo". Other reels were also identical copies but had their numbering
changed slightly to include a prefix of TV, and example, would be
TV-SAM-1, which is a copy of the Sawyers made "SAM-1 Adventures of Sam
Sawyer" reel.
Not all reels were copies of Sawyers
products. There were a range of reels that were prefixed TV that were
actually produced for the TELE-VISEX viewer and are unique to Alto-Relevo.
Tele-Visex
Reel List
Thanks to Leo Vasconcellos B.
Maluf of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for finding both of these viewers for me |
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