Dizzy Gillespie was a fan. Frank Sinatra purchased one for himself and gave them to his Rat Pack mates. Hugh Hefner acquired one for the Playboy Mansion. Clairtone Sound Corp.’s Project G high-fidelity stereo system, which debuted in 1964 at the National Furniture Show in Chicago, was squarely aimed toward trendsetters. The intent was to make the smooth, fashionable stereo an object of need.
By the time the Project G was launched, the Toronto-based Clairtone was already effectively revered for its stunning, high-end stereos. “Everyone knew about Clairtone,” Peter Munk, president and cofounder of the firm, boasted to a newspaper columnist. “The prime minister had one, and if the local truck driver didn’t have one, he wanted one.” Alas, with a price ticket of CA $1,850—about the value of a small automotive—it’s unlikely that the native truck driver would have really purchased a Project G. But he might nonetheless dream.
The design of the Project G appeared to return from a dream.
“I want you to imagine that you are visitors from Mars and that you have never seen a Canadian living room, let alone a hi-fi set,” is how designer Hugh Spencer challenged Clairtone’s engineers once they first began engaged on the Project G. “What are the features that, regardless of design considerations, you would like to see incorporated in a new hi-fi set?”
The movie “I’ll Take Sweden” featured a Project G, proven right here with co-star Tuesday Weld.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
The end result was a stereo system like no different. Instead of audio system, the Project G had sound globes. Instead of the heavy cabinetry typical of Nineteen Sixties leisure consoles, it had smooth, angled rosewood panels balanced on an aluminum stand. At over 2 meters lengthy, it was too massive for the common lounge however excellent for Hollywood motion pictures—Dean Martin had one in his swinging Malibu bachelor pad in the 1965 movie Marriage on the Rocks. According to the 1964 press launch saying the Project G, it was nothing lower than “a new sculptured representation of modern sound.”
The first-generation Project G had a high-end Elac Miracord 10H turntable, whereas later fashions used a Garrard Lab Series turntable. The transistorized chassis and management panel offered AM, FM, and FM-stereo reception. There was area for storing LPs or for an optionally available Ampex 1250 reel-to-reel tape recorder.
The “G” in Project G stood for “globe.” The hermetically sealed 46-centimeter-diameter sound globes have been made of spun aluminum and mounted at the ends of the cantilevered base; inside have been Wharfedale audio system. The sound globes rotated 340 levels to mission a cone of sound and could possibly be tuned to re-create the atmosphere wherein the music was initially recorded—a live performance corridor, cathedral, nightclub, or opera home.
Diane Landry, winner of the 1963 Miss Canada magnificence pageant, poses with a Project G2. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
Initially, Clairtone supposed to supply solely a handful of the stereos. As one author later put it, it was extra like an idea automotive “intended to give Clairtone an aura of futuristic cool.” Eventually fewer than 500 have been made. But the Project G nonetheless turned an icon of mod ’60s Canadian design, profitable a silver medal at the thirteenth Milan Triennale, the worldwide design exhibition.
And then it was over; the dream had ended. Eleven years after its founding, Clairtone collapsed, and Munk and cofounder David Gilmour misplaced management of the firm.
The start of Clairtone Sound Corp.
Clairtone’s Peter Munk lived a colourful life, with a nightmarish begin and lots of improbable and dreamlike elements too. He was born in 1927 in Budapest to a affluent Jewish household. In the spring of 1944, Munk and 13 members of his household boarded a practice with greater than 1,600 Jews certain for the Bergen-Belsen focus camp. They arrived, however after some weeks the practice moved on, finally reaching impartial Switzerland. It later emerged that the Nazis had extorted giant sums of money and valuables from the occupants in trade for letting the practice proceed.
As an adolescent in Switzerland, Munk was a self-described celebration animal. He loved dancing and courting and occurring lengthy ski journeys with mates. Schoolwork was not a high precedence, and he didn’t have the grades to attend a Swiss college. His mom, an Auschwitz survivor, inspired him to review in Canada, the place he had an uncle.
Before he might enroll, although, Munk blew his tuition cash entertaining a younger lady throughout a visit to New York. He then discovered work choosing tobacco, earned sufficient for tuition, and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1952 with a level in electrical engineering.
Clairtone cofounders Peter Munk [left] and David Gilmour envisioned the firm as a luxurious model.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
At the age of 30, Munk was making customized hi-fi units for rich purchasers when he and David Gilmour, who owned a small enterprise importing Scandinavian items, determined to hitch forces. Their thought was to create high-fidelity gear with a recent Scandinavian design. Munk’s father-in-law, William Jay Gutterson, invested $3,000. Gilmour mortgaged his home. In 1958, Clairtone Sound Corp. was born.
From the starting, Munk and Gilmour sought a high-end clientele. They positioned Clairtone as a luxurious model, half of a chic way of life. If you have been the kind of lady who listened to music whereas sporting pearls and a strapless robe and lounging on a shag rug, your music can be taking part in on a Clairtone. If you have been a person who dressed well and owned an Arne Jacobsen Egg chair, you’d even be listening on a Clairtone. That was the fashionable way of life captured in the firm’s ads.
In 1958, Clairtone produced its first prototype: the monophonic 100-M, which had an extended, low cupboard produced from oiled teak, with a Dual 1004 turntable, a Granco tube chassis, and a pair of Coral audio system. It by no means went into manufacturing, however the subsequent mannequin, the stereophonic 100-S, received a Design Award from Canada’s National Industrial Design Council in 1959. By 1963, Clairtone was promoting 25,000 models a yr.
Peter Munk visits the Project G meeting line in 1965. Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
Design was at all times entrance and middle at Clairtone, not only for the merchandise but additionally for the typography, ads, and even the annual reviews. Yet nothing in the early designs signaled the dramatic flip it will take with the Project G. That happened as a result of of Hugh Spencer.
Spencer was not an engineer, nor did he have expertise designing shopper electronics. His day job was designing units for the Canadian Broadcast Corp. He consulted frequently with Clairtone on the firm’s graphics and signage. The solely stereo he ever designed for Clairtone was the Project G, which he first modeled as a picket field with tennis balls caught to the sides.
From each design and high quality views, Clairtone was profitable. But the firm was virtually at all times hemorrhaging money. In 1966, with nice fanfare and enormous authorities incentives, the firm opened a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Nova Scotia. It was a mismatch. The native workforce didn’t have the obligatory abilities, and the surrounding infrastructure couldn’t deal with the manufacturing. On 27 August 1967, Munk and Gilmour have been compelled out of Clairtone, which turned the property of the authorities of Nova Scotia.
Despite the demise of their first firm (and the authorities inquiry that adopted), Munk and Gilmour remained mates and went on to grow to be serial entrepreneurs. Their subsequent enterprise? A resort in Fiji, which turned half of a big resort chain in that nation, Australia, and New Zealand. (Gilmour later based Fiji Water.) Then Munk and Gilmour purchased a gold mine and cofounded Barrick Gold (now Barrick Mining Corp., one of the largest gold mining operations in the world). Their companies all had ups and downs, however each males turned extraordinarily rich and famous philanthropists.
Preserving Canadian design
As an instance of iconic design, the Project G looks as if a really perfect specimen for museum collections. And in 1991, Frank Davies, one of the designers who labored for Clairtone, donated a Project G to the lately launched Design Exchange in Toronto. It can be the first object in the DX’s everlasting assortment, which sought to protect examples of Canadian design. The museum shortly turned Canada’s middle for the promotion of design, internet hosting greater than 50 packages every year to show folks about how design influences each side of our lives.
In 2008, the museum opened The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958–1971, an exhibition showcasing the firm’s distinctive graphic design, industrial design, engineering, and pictures.
David Gilmour’s spouse, Anna Gilmour, was the firm’s first in-house mannequin.Nina Munk/The Peter Munk Estate
But what occurred to the DX itself is a reminder that any museum, nonetheless worthy, shouldn’t be taken without any consideration. In 2019, the DX abruptly closed its everlasting assortment, and curators have been charged with deaccessioning its objects. Fortunately, the Royal Ontario Museum, Carleton and York Universities, and the Archives of Ontario, amongst others, have been in a position to settle for the artifacts and companion archives. (The Project G pictured at high is now at the Royal Ontario Museum.)
Researchers at York and Carleton have been working to digitize and just about reconstitute the DX assortment, by means of the xDX Project. They’re utilizing the Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) to show interlinked and contextualized information about the assortment right into a searchable database. It’s a worthy objective, even when it’s not fairly the identical as having all of the artifacts and supporting papers bodily collectively in a single place. I admit to feeling each happy about this digital workaround, and in addition a little bit unhappy {that a} unified assortment that when spoke to the historic significance of Canadian design not exists.
Part of a persevering with collection historic artifacts that embrace the boundless potential of expertise.
An abridged model of this text seems in the February 2026 print challenge as “The Project G Stereo Defined 1960s Cool.”
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