Deejay, I believe the vertical motor electrics I was talking about were older than that, about 1950-51, and probably English. I ended up thinking they may have been branded Sunbeam, but I haven't been able to substantiate that.
al, I am happy to retract my comments, I don't recall seeing a gold one, but it was a long time ago. Not rubbing the wood right down makes a lot of sense when there was labelling to be preserved.
Deejay, the coffee table model presents a few challenges. You'd have to preserve the long push-handle, and that means you'd need a towed roller-seat to provide a support in the right place to keep it from overbalancing. For all we know, they may have used towed roller-seats with those mowers in Britain: plenty of servants available to push the master around when he wanted to mow the lawn himself. You might consider also providing a built-in umbrella over the seat.
