New in Box Northern Electric Contempra Chocolate Brown Push Button Telephone

This vintage Northern Electric Contempra telephone is brand new in its original box with all its original accessories.

The Contempra is a telephone designed and produced by Northern Electric beginning in 1967. Contempra was the first phone designed in Canada with previous Canadian sets having been designed in the US for Western Electric and built under licence.

Contempra was highly stylized, using straight lines and oblique angles where curves and corners would be found on contemporary sets like the Trimline. The design was further notable at release for being available in "nine outrageously elegant colours" including bright red and orange, deep brown and green, and other colours selected to match new styles of interior decorating emerging in the 1960s. The one option that was not initially supplied was black, the standard colour for phones for decades.

Contempra remains an icon of Canadian industrial design, famous to the point of being featured on a postage stamp. It won numerous design awards and is part of the permanent display at the Canadian Museum of History and Canada Science and Technology Museum. It was widely licensed around the world and its production, including that of a smaller version known as Contemprette, continued into the 1990s.

Warm brown case with push button dial in the handset, just plug in and it's ready to go. Fully tested and working.

A beautiful piece of functional decor and in like new condition with no scratches or fading. Comes in original box and accessories as pictured.