Upright piano

Date1870 ca.

Place MadeLondon, England, Europe

ModelCottage Upright

Serial No.33399

SignedGold stencil on nameboard: John Broadwood & Sons / London
MarkingsPunched on wrestplank, right side: 33399

Punched on middle of wrestplank: 798

Punched on right vertical brace, bottom: DICKEY

Punched on right vertical brace, bottom: G. ACOTT

Punched on nut, right side: H. DARLING

Punched on a4 key lever: R. & G. SEYMOUR
DescriptionCompass: AAA-a4 (7 octaves) 85 notes

Two pedals: left: una corda; right: damper

Construction:
Case veneered in rosewood
There is a diagonal spruce brace glued to the front of the soundboard, 95 mm wide and 6 mm thick, butted and screwed to the center of the bottom edge of the wrestplank and the left side of the case.
There are two square bridges: bass bridge AAA-c-sharp; treble d-a4
The bridges are singled pinned from AAA-c-sharp and double pinned from there on.
There is a triangular metal hitch pin plate for notes AAA-b1 which is butted against the bottom of the case.
The rectangular tuning pins are pierced.
Horizontal soundboard grain.
The upper front panel frames are ornamental fretwork with cloth backing.
There is a lamp pedestal on the udnerside of the nameboard.
The legs are hexagonal and turne at the top and bottom.

Action:
Upright sticker action, hammer butts and stickers linked with leather, bird-cage damper wires
The action of this piano is nearly identical to Broadwood upright NMM 2367, ca. 1842. The only differences are the bird-cage wires and size of the hammers and dampers.
The hammers hanks are round and are made of mahogany, 6 mm thick
The hammer moldings are of mahogany and are covered with two layers of leather and one thick layer of felt from AAA-f1, one layer of leather and one layer of felt from f-sharp1-d-sharp4, and one layer of felt from e4-a4.
The molding of the extreme bass hammers is 65 mm long and the total thickness of the covering is 10 mm.
The hammers are graduated; the modling of the extreme treble hammer is 52 mm.
The hammers are hung in four blocks with long center pins.
The are no bridle tapes or hammer return springs.

Dampers:
Damper compass AAA-c-sharp3
The dampers are modern flat damper felts
The top section of dampers g1-d-sharp2 was trimmed off.
Dampers e2-c-sharp3 have ledge-like moldings cut in the levers, with only one horizontal felt square, about 3 mm thick

Keyboard:
Ivory naturals
Ebony sharps
One score line.
Key levers weighted in the back with two large round lead weights.

Stringing and scaling:
Parallel strung
AAA-DD-sharp: Single strung
EE-g-sharp2: Double strung
a2-a4: Triple strung
The double strung notes on the bass bridge have separate hitchpins for each wire.
The double strung notes n the long bridge share hitchpins.
The triple strung notes have an interesting hitchpin arrangement; the hitchpins in this section are not arranged adjacently, but rather in triangle shapes, and the strings are looped around the pins in a concentric manner.

Cataloging by Rodger Kelly, 1991
DimensionsLength: 1328 mm (4'4-1/4")
Width: 654 mm (2' 1-13/16")
Height: 1209 mm (3' 11-5/8")

Keyboard:
Three-octave measure: 490 mm
Length of heads: 43 mm
Width of heads: 22 mm
Published ReferencesRodger S. Kelly, A Catalog of European Pianos in the Shrine to Music Museum, MM Thesis, University of South Dakota, 1991, p. 137-139.

Credit LineBoard of Trustees, 1978

Object number02371

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