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Posted 21 July 2009 - 07:03 PM
Never buy an original unless is has been verified as legit by Tascarella Cues
Masapequa Park, NY 11762 or by some other expert in this field. Many fake copies have been sold at high prices. Adam Cue makes copies with permission and all of their models show George's signature, lifted from an old check he wrote. He never signed his cues, which helps to Id the originals from all the new copies that have been made.
George Balabushka ran a small garage-based carpentry shop.
Born Gregory Balabushka
December 9, 1912
Russia
Died December 5, 1975 (aged 62)
Brooklyn, New York
George Balabushka (December 9, 1912 – December 5, 1975) was a Russian-born billiards (pool) cue maker, arguably the most prominent member of that profession,[1] and is sometimes referred to as "the Stradivarius of cuemakers".[2] His full name or last name standing alone is often used to refer to a cue stick made by him.[1]
George Balabushka was born in Kobryn, Bela Rus (White Russia) on December 9, 1912 and emigrated to the United States with his mother in 1926.[1] With his father Anton, who had emigrated in 1913, and his mother Natalia and younger sister Manya (Mary), George Balabushka settled in Brooklyn, New York.[1] Although originally named Gregori, according to Balabushka he was given a new first name, George, by emigration officials when he was processed through Ellis Island.[1]
Employment
Foregoing all formal education, Balabushka was completely self-taught in English, math, and the sciences. As a young teen, he was already an accomplished artisan and built the first of many accordions when he was only 15. Balabushka's first job was as a wooden toy designer and maker,[1] working for the Educational Equipment Company[3] then located at 71 West 23rd St., in Manhattan,[4] which made building blocks for nurseries and schools.[3] He graduated to building children's furniture for the Playtime Woodworking Company located on Greenwich Village's Jane Street.[3] While on the job, Balabushka lost his middle finger to a band saw and made himself a replacement plastic finger from a wooden mold of such craftsmanship that even his friends did not realize his loss until long after the incident. After a while, he refused to wear the faux finger because it interfered with his agility.[1][5] As Balabushka's carpentry skills deepened he began building other detailed and complex carpentry pieces on his own time.[2] In 1949 Balabushka applied for patent on a folding leg bracket mechanism he invented, which was granted in 1951.[6]
[edit] Marriage and children
While working at Playtime Woodworking he met Josephine Dudick, his future wife, who lived directly across the street from the toy company and worked in the accounting department, which she eventually managed for many years.[3] George and Jo were married in 1941 and settled in the family home in the Fort Hamilton section of Brooklyn. George and Jo had two sons, Gregory and George, both named after their father. He also helped his sister Mary raise her only daughter, Janet, and continued to support his parents for the duration of their lives.[1]
George's wife deserves special credit. Jo was not just a source of love and stability, but she also was the rock that allowed Balabushka the freedom to hone his craft. "Josephine's limitless patience and independent spirit gave George the time and solitude a great artist needs to perfect his craft." Jo outlived Balabushka by nearly 35 years, but she remained devoted to him until her passing in 2009 at age 90.[3]
[edit] Transition to cuemaker
Balabushka was an avid billiards player, especially of the game of straight pool, taking part in competitions and spending time with well known practitioners of the sport.[1] In 1959 he purchased a Brooklyn-based pool hall with partner, Frank McGown, which was located at 50th Street and 5th Avenue.[1] While running the room, he began repairing cues as a hobby, and soon the idea was sparked to design and manufacture his own line of pool cues.[1]
By the end of 1959, Balabushka had made a number of cues, most of which were given to friends as Christmas gifts[1]. As this practice went on, he began receiving orders for his cues.[1] His first cues were conversions of the popular Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company manufactured "Titlist" cues,[1] which were one-piece cues; that is, they had no joint in the middle that would allow a player to break down the cue into two sections for ease of transport.[7] At the time he started, there were very few private cuemakers, the industry being dominated by large manufacturers.[1]
[edit] Cuemaking career and death
Between 1959 and 1962, Balabushka handcrafted between 20 and 30 cues per year on a part-time basis.[1] Because of the relative dearth of private cuemakers and the excellence of his product, Balabushka's name quickly became known amongst professional players.[1] by the end of 1962, Balabushuka was receiving more orders for cues than he could fill given his time constraints.[1] Balabushka accordingly sold his interest in the pool room, converted his garage into a carpentry shop, and by 1964 was building cues full time, while continuing to hone his cuemaking abilities.[1]
Unlike many of the large manufacturers of the day, Balabushka's emphasis was on playing ability and fine craftsmanship, reflecting the values he had held during his years in the woodworking business.[1] He was an innovator in cue construction, cue finishes and cue design.[1] Balabushka's cues were not the elaborately decorated attempts at building art that became a mainstay of the cuemarket starting in the 1980s and onward.[1] Rather, most Balabushka cues are relatively plain and without grand ornamentation flourishes.[5] Many of his trademark construction techniques have become standard in the industry, such as the use of Irish linen for wrap material and block style checkered-pattern ringwork above a cue's wrap, commonly employing alternating ebony and ivory, pieces which are eponymously named "Bushka rings."[1][2]
George Balabushka died in 1975, just a few days shy of his 63rd birthday. Few people know this, but a few months before his death, Balabushka declined a handsome offer from AMF Corporation estimated at around $250,000 to mass-produce cue sticks under the Balabushka name. His refusal to "sell out" to a corporate entity is a testament to George's character, something rarely seen today. George was posthumously honored as the first inductee into the American Cuemakers Association Hall of Fame in February, 1993.[8] In 2004, he was inducted into the Meritorious Service category of the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame.[9]
A pool cue and its major parts.
[edit] Cue details
There are three distinct classes of Balabushka cues produced during different time periods related to what blanks Balabushka was using in cue construction: The Titlist blank era (1959-1966), the Burton Spain blank era (1966-1971) and the Gus Szamboti blank era (1971-1975).[2] The "blanks" referred to are the bottom (butt) portion of a cue where the splicing of various hardwoods has been completed but the cue has not yet been turned on a lathe to produce the final shape, and certain features have not yet been added such as a wrap, joint mechanism, butt cap, bumper and any inlays.[7]
While blank variety is the defining demarcation between one Balabushka cue and another, there are some shared features spanning Balabushka's fleeting 16 year career.[2] Balabushka forearms were characteristically made with straight grained maple, based on Balabushka's belief that a single-direction maple grain provided superior integrity to that of curly maple or birdseye maple.[2] Stainless steel joints were used almost exclusively, as were delrin butt caps, although the rare ivory joint and ivory butt cap may be encountered, greatly increasing the cue's value.[2] Balabushka used a distinguishing reddish-brown bumper, and employed Cortland Irish linen for many of his wraps, with the highly sought after leather wrap a rare departure for him and a distinct value enhancer.[2]
In addition to Bushka rings, various other decorative rings were commonly incorporated by Balabushka, including various colored plastics, silver and contrasting wood rings.[2] For decoration, Balabushka often inlayed small mother-of-pearl dots and notched diamonds.[2] Series of Window-shaped maple pieces not uncommonly adorned Balabushka butt sleeves, with each window usually featuring one burl for their aesthetic effect.[2] Some other features common to many other cuemakers' lines from the same era are notably absent or mostly absent from Balabushka's, including ivory inlays and the signing of his cues.[2] A long standing controversy exists over what finish BalaBushka used.[2] One side argues that he used an oil finish on all his cues, while the other insists that his later cues were coated with a spray lacquer.[2]
[edit] Titlist era
When Balabushka first started repairing cues while working at his pool room he started converting house cues into custom cues.[2] Many of these house cues were made by Brunswick.[2] When he started building his own cues in 1959 he used blanks purchased from Brunswick for their "Titlist" cue line; the same used in the construction of the house cues he had been converting.[2] Many of the fine cuemakers working during the same era as Balabushka did likewise, including Frank Paradise (Paradise cues), Eugene Balner (Palmer cues, named after Arnold Palmer) and Ernie Gutierrez (Ginacue), all following in the footsteps of earlier master cuemaker, Herman Rambow.[2]
Building a full spliced blank from scratch was an expensive and painstaking process and the large manufacturing facilities of Brunswick turned out good quality blanks, with beautiful points, veneers and sound construction.[3][2] In Balabushka's case, his entire workshop consisted of a single lathe and other woodworking equipment in the confines of his modest garage and building his own full-splice butts would have been prohibitively difficult and expensive for him.[2]
[edit] Burton Spain era
Balabushka used Titlist blanks until 1966 when he was contacted by Chicagoean Burton Spain.[2] Spain had recently begun making handmade spliced blanks and was supplying them to Balabushka's closest rival, Frank Paradise.[2] Spain had become fascinated by splicing technology when he came upon a titlist cue split down the middle in 1965 and set out to perfect and even improve on the titlist splice.[2] Spain's original intent was to be predominantly a cuemaker in his own right using his proprietary spliced blanks. However, by 1966 Spain's superior blanks were in high demand and he instead turned to making blanks for other cuemakers full time, which he continued until 1970.[2]
Balabushka took Spain up on his offer after seeing the quality of his splices.[2] Buying from Spain also had the advantage that he was able to have Spain customize the blanks to his specifications.[2] During this period Balabushka began incorporating more elaborate details into his cues, including the eponymous Bushka rings innovation.[2] Many later cuemakers would install Bushka rings both above the wrap and on the butt sleeve below the wrap.[2] Balabushka used them only above the wrap, which is believed to have aided him in keeping the balance point higher on the cue[2]. In 1970, Spain sold his cue business to tool and die maker, John Davis, who had been assisting Spain for a number of years.[2] Balabushka continued buying blanks from Davis in lieu of Spain during the following year.[2]
[edit] Gus Szamboti era
In 1971 Balabushka met Penndel, Pennsylvania native Gus Szamboti at a tournament.[3][2] Szamboti had been working for RCA as a draftsman and designer but RCA layoffs were common at the time and he had started designing and selling pool cues as a more stable job path.[3] Though he too started production with Titlist blanks as well as blanks manufactured by WICO of Chicago, Szamboti began making his own.[3] Balabushka was very impressed with Szamboti's blanks and, in addition to the two men becoming fast friends, he became Szamboti's first customer, buying blanks from him for $18 a piece.[3]
Balabushka cues from the Gus Szamboti era are typified by straight grained maple forearms bearing four ebony points, with four veneers included, normally colored black, green, white and mahogany, or sometimes with an orange veneer in place of mahogany.[2] Balabushka cues from this era, spanning the last five years of his life, are considered the finest of his career as a class.[2] There have been unconfirmed rumors that some few cues made during this period included splices made by Balabushka himself.[2]
[edit] Prominence
It is estimated that Balabushka only produced between 1,000 and 1,200 cues during his lifetime.[1] However, by the mid 1960s, forged Balabushka cues started circulating in the market, as he was already recognized as the premier cue maker of the era,[1][9] referred to as "the Stradivarius of cuemakers".[7][10] Balabushka and his cues achieved much wider recognition after being prominently featured in Martin Scorsese’s 1986 film, The Color of Money (the sequel to the classic 1961 film The Hustler).[1]
In the film, Tom Cruise’s character, Vincent Lauria, is presented with a beautiful cue by Paul Newman's character, Fast Eddie Felson. Vincent takes the cue, his reverence obvious, and is told by Eddie "it's a Balabushka."[1] After this, Balabushka's name became associated by the general public with highly-valued and rare cues.[1] The cue actually used in the film was, however, not a genuine Balabushka,[2] but a model 18,[11] Joss brand cue, custom-made to look like a Balabushka.[2] The filmmakers feared that any cue used might get damaged during filming; especially in light of a scene set in a pool room where Cruise's character rapidly whirls the cue around in time to the song Werewolves of London. An original Balabushka was thus considered too valuable to be risked in the production.[2]
Original Balabushka cues with verified provenance may realize tens of thousands of dollars at auction.[5] In 1994, For example, a Balabushka was purchased by a collector for $45,000.[5] However, there are many fake Balabushka cues in existence.[2] Complicating matters, in the 1980s with the permission and license of his surviving family, a line of Balabushka replicas began to be manufactured in large quantities by the Adam Custom Cue Company
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