More London Piano Makers

In this sequel to Five London Piano Makers, Alastair Laurence turns his attention to six other piano manufacturing concerns: individual firms, groups of companies, or piano-making families. Taken together, they represent a cross-section of the industry from prestigious and artistically distinguished makers to those who aimed to satisfy the mass market.

The Chappell company produced some of the finest instruments ever seen in the UK, yet their piano-making seems to have been looked on as merely a sideline to their international music-publishing business. The Eavestaff Minipiano was an attempt to revive the fortunes of the British industry by creating an instrument that was both affordable and compact enough to fit into small apartments. The Squire family – a whole army of them – were active in the London piano industry throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rogers and Hopkinson were two nineteenth-century firms that became a single entity in 1924, producing quality pianos in London until 1993. Finally, we have the remarkable story of Alfred Knight: himself a remarkably fine pianist and piano designer, and unmatched in the industry for his flair for managing a large manufacturing concern. If anyone could have revived British piano making, it would surely have been him; but in the end, it was not to be.

Remarkably, all these firms were based, at one time or another, in or near the inner-London suburb of Camden Town. This was the centre of London piano making in the period 1860–1930, and at its heart was the historic Mother Red Cap pub, which functioned as a kind of informal labour exchange. The streets nearby were crowded with pianos or piano parts being trundled on hand-carts from one workshop to another; there was constant trade gossip and intrigue; there was great pride in workmanship, and a high level of interest as the qualities of one maker’s pianos were compared with another; and, of course, there was money to be made.

All this has now disappeared. The author describes, from personal experience, the decline of piano making in London, and although it is perhaps a sad story, it is in many ways as interesting and thought-provoking as the history of its rise and palmy years.

Appendix 1
A list of employees of the Chappell Piano Company
who lost their lives in World War I

Appendix 2
A Chappell Retail Price List, October 1929,
and a Rogers Retail Price List, c. 1938

Appendix 3
An outline tree of the Brasted family of pianomakers

Appendix 4
A checklist of new models of upright, grand and minipianos
introduced by Brasted Brothers Ltd between 1930 and 1969

Appendix 5
An outline tree of the Squire family of piano makers

Appendix 6

The last will of William Brinsmead Squire,
made 15th March 1862, proved 8th March 1864


Appendix 7
An outline tree of the Hopkinson family of piano makers

Appendix 8

A selection of favourable testimonials which had been
received by the firm of George Rogers & Sons by circa 1933

Appendix 9
The reminiscences of George Veness, who was working
at the Rogers/Hopkinson factory during the early 1970s

Appendix 10
Key Knight personnel involved in piano manufacture,
c.1950 - 1990

Appendix 11
Lowest retail prices for various English upright models,
May 1969

Softback, 210 × 148 mm, 144 pages, 41 black-and-white illustrations and two in colour.
ISBN 978–0–9555590–4–4