Clairtone

Clairtone Sound Corporation Limited was a manufacturer of high-quality sound electronics and accessories based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1958 by the Hungarian-born entrepreneur and electronics engineer Peter Munk with furniture designer David Gilmour, the company established an international reputation for stereo and cabinetry design in the 1960s. It had failed little more than a decade later, but in its heyday it made a notable contribution to the field of consumer electronics.

Already in 1959, Clairtone won a design award from Canada's National Industrial Design Council for its very first hi-fi model, the "100-S"—a long, low teak cabinet fitted with a Dual (brand) 1004 turntable, a Granco tube chassis, and speakers obscured by cream-colored broadcloth from Knoll. But the most famous Clairtone design was the futuristic Project G series designed by Hugh Spencer and introduced at the National Furniture Show in Chicago in January 1964. Striking, massive (nearly seven-feet long), and expensive ($1,600, or about $12,000 today), the Project G featured an rosewood cabinet mounted on a metal base, and, at either end, cantilevered black aluminum "sound globes" (a.k.a. speakers). The Project G introduced the now-standard modular approach to consumer audio that offered a dramatic departure from boxy cabinet design popular until that time (and which Clairtone also manufactured). The Project G won a silver medal at the 1964 Milan Triannale and is now widely considered a design icon.

Clairtone earned a reputation for combining modern designs with high-quality materials, and marketing them well. It opened its first international sales office in New York in 1960 and convinced Frank Sinatra and Oscar Peterson, among others luminaries, to endorse Clairtone's sound systems. "Listen to Sinatra on Clairtone stereo. Sinatra does," was one of the company’s memorable tag lines. The Project G system was featured in the films Marriage on the Rocks and The Graduate, marking an early example of product placement, and Clairtone hired the fashion photographer Irving Penn to photograph the hi-fi for its promotional booklets and brochures. The Project G came to epitomize the ethos of the Swinging Sixties when Hugh Hefner bought one for the Playboy Mansion.

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