This telephone is a Finnish made Wadén, and the model dates from 1888, with the serial number 1723.
The phone is made from stained birch and the part behind bells from cultivar of silver birch.
The transmitter is a carbon pencil type which is installed under the porcelain writing slope.
The phone has been designed and made for easy repair as the porcelain or the whole top part can be removed just by undoing 4 wood screws, and the wire connections are pressure contacts.
The original porcelain was made by Arabia, a Finnish ceramics company, but mine is a repro made by Pii-Pot, a local ceramics studio.
The transmitter also is reproduction, which I have tested and found working with a relatively good sound quality.
According to the sales catalogue the newer Wadén phones should have had carbon grain transmitters, but so far none has found one like that.
The battery cover had been painted over with black paint on top of rust, which I totally cleaned down to bare metal and then repainted and redecorated. Most of the Wadén phones has same kind of painting in battery cover as Ericsson 301 but some has this same red logo as the table phones.
In the transmitter, there is a carbon block with grooves attached to a steel membrane, 4 carbon pencils and then on top once again a carbon block.
I have adjusted transmitter so that the resistance over it is 6-8 ohms, now the bars are moving freely and the transmitter seems to work OK as mentioned earlier.
When I bought this phone, it was missing the porcelain self, the transmitter, the receiver, the crank, the transformer and lot of the screws and other smaller parts. The receiver is original Stockholms Bell one, looking very much like Wadén one. The porcelain was specially made for me, the transmitter, crank and transformer I made myself.
These telephones are rare, Wadén made a totally of only 2503 telephones in at least 8 models. So far my collector friends and I know of only 21 of these phones which have survived.
If you own a Wadén telephone, would you please send me pictures of it and, if possible, it's serial number (I can guide you to where it can be found). My interest is to form a timeline as to when these telephones were manufactured.
My mail: juha.toivanen@salo.salonseutu.fi
Other models of Wadén telephones can be found on following link: http://www.elisa.com/on-elisa/corporate/history/telephone-museum-elisa/