The Styrous® Viewfinder: RCA Victor & Nipper

August 22, 2021

RCA Victor & Nipper

RCA Victor record sleeve detail

detail photo by Styrous®

One hundred and fifteen years ago, on August 22, 1906, The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey., began to manufacture the Victrola. The hand-cranked unit, with horn cabinet, sold for $200.

In 1929, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs (including the famous "Victrola") and phonograph records. The company then became RCA Victor. In absorbing Victor, RCA acquired the New World rights to the famous Nipper/"His Master's Voice" trademark.

RCA Record's Nipper logo

Nipper was a real dog born in 1884 in Bristol, England, who served as the model for an 1898 painting by Francis Barraud titled His Master's Voice. This image was the basis for one of the world's best known trademarks, the famous dog-and-gramophone that was used by several record companies and their associated company brands.

Nipper was likely a mixed-breed dog, although most early sources suggest that he was a Smooth Fox Terrier, a Jack Russell Terrier, or possibly "part Bull Terrier". He was named Nipper because he would often "nip" at the backs of visitors' legs.

Nipper originally lived with his owner, Mark Henry Barraud, in the Prince's Theatre located on Shaftesbury Avenue, in the London Borough of Camden where Barraud was a scenery designer. When Barraud died in 1887, his brothers Philip and Francis took care of the dog, then Francis took Nipper to Liverpool, and later to Mark's widow in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey.

When he was eleven years old Nipper died of natural causes in September of 1895 and was buried in a small park surrounded by magnolia trees at Kingston upon Thames, Greater London, England. In 1898, three years after Nipper's death, Francis Barraud, his last owner and brother of his first owner, painted a picture of Nipper listening intently to a wind-up Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph.

His Master's Voice - 1898

painting by Francis Barraud

Francis Barraud . . .

"It is difficult to say how the idea came to me beyond the fact that it suddenly occurred to me that to have my dog listening to the phonograph, with an intelligent and rather puzzled expression, and call it 'His Master's Voice' would make an excellent subject. We had a phonograph and I often noticed how puzzled he was to make out where the voice came from. It certainly was the happiest thought I ever had."

Francis Barraud with His Master's Voice painting

date & photographer unknown

Thinking the Edison-Bell Company located in New Jersey, USA, might find it useful, Barraud offered the painting to chairman James E. Hough who replied, "Dogs don't listen to phonographs"! Not a big fan of Thomas Edison, I have more on the failings of him and his company in a blog on Nikola Tesla (link below).

On the 31st of May, 1899, Barraud showed His Master's Voice to the general manager of the Gramophone Company in London. The Company paid £50 for the picture and £50 for the copyright, on condition that Barraud paint a gramophone over the phonograph; it hangs in the EMI London office today and has become one of the most famous trademarks in the world.

Since then, Nipper had been a major image for the RCA Victor company in many ways in addition to the albums and labels.

RCA Victor record sleeve

photo by Styrous®

Nipper stain glass window

RCA Victor Company, Camden Plant

Camden, NJ Building 17

Nipper is a globe-trotter:

Argentina

Sweden

Germany

France

Canada

Russia

The Netherlands by way of England

China

On the subject of China, Spike Jones had his off-beat, not so PC say about it with a parody of a song by Frankie Laine . . .

Spike Jones ~ Chinese Mule Train

Nipper was hot stuff during the Roaring Twenties spinning the latest dances, the Charleston, the Black Bottom and especially the suavay dance invented in the 1910s, reaching its height of popularity in the 1930s and remains practiced today, the Foxtrot . . .