James Shields

[Bill Kibby]

I'm guessing you must be related to Magnus Wake in Edinburgh? Although his piano bears Shields' name, the keyboard has rounded sharps, labelled "Registered Key Board", which suggests that it may actually be a Collard & Collard piano, possibly from around the 1860s, although the transfer is slightly different to the Collard ones I have seen.

1886 is our earliest list of Newcastle piano firms so far, and Shields is not listed, so he is presumed to have gone out of business by then. Unfortunately, although I am endlessly fascinated by victorian pianos, there is very little market for them in the UK, and unless they have been professionally restored, they rarely fetch Ł90 at auction here, so I am offered several each year for nothing. I would like to rescue every victorian piano destined for the bonfire, but unless they are near East Anglia, it is not usually within our budget to even pick them up, and it may be some years before we have museum space. See
http://www.uk-piano.org/piano-gen/valua ... ianos.html