Zimbalist Nickel-Plated Taj Mahal Music Box with Swiss Thorens Movement. The beautiful reproduction of the mausoleum has intricate detailing of the main structure and the surrounding four minarets, with four feet elevating the base it rests on. A knob on one side can be pulled out or pushed in to make the piece pause playing or continue once it is wound, with the winding knob on the underside. A label for Thorens on the bottom identifies the song as the "Merry Widow Waltz Dream," and another label indicates it was made "entirely by hand" in India. 

Condition: Working. 

Size: 5 1/4 x 5 1/2 x 6 in. 

The Zimbalist Music Box Company was founded by Russian immigrant Fred Zimbalist just after World War II in Cleveland, Ohio. Born in 1909 into a family of musicians, he fled from political unrest to Switzerland in the early 1930s, where he found work with the Thorens company developing music boxes. In the United States he produced many nickel-plated pieces shaped like animals, vehicles, and famous structures from around the world like the Taj Mahal and St. Basil’s Cathedral, commissioned from artisans in India and almost always utilizing Swiss movements from Thorens, with no two pieces ever exactly alike. The company peaked in the 1970s and saw a decline in sales in the 1980s that eventually led to them shuttering after the fall of the Berlin Wall, with Fred passing away from complications due to Alzheimer’s in 2003. Today, many of their pieces are sought by collectors for their high quality and uniqueness. 

Working. 

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