Information on Collard piano

[tschimpke]

We received a Collard & Collard piano that was being given away several years ago. Nobody in our house is familiar with pianos. The piano appears to be old and there is a number carved into the top left under the lid. The number 532 is on top and then 98155 in some kind of script below. Does anyone know if this is maybe the serial number and how old this piano may be?

[Bill Kibby]

If you have a look at my Numbers page at
http://pianohistory.info/

about a third of the way down the page, there is information about Collard & Collard serial numbers, The short number is thought to be a model or type, and doesn't help us, but the handwritten number 98155 suggests that it was made around 1874, and the stock records of Rudall & Co. show that Collard pianos in the range 90,000 to 111,000 were sold in random order between 1871 and 1878.

If you are able to post photos of the whole piano here, or email them to me to post, that may tell us more, but I imagine this may be a Cottage Piano as described on my Victorian page at
http://pianohistory.info/

[tschimpke]

Bill, I looked at your website and it does appear to be a cottage piano. I would send pictures but I cannot figure out how to upload them.... I appreciate the information. We really have no knowledge of pianos and were going to get rid of it so I can now at least have some history on the piano. We actually rescued the piano from the curb where it was set out to be collected by the garbage service by a neighbor. I am thankful that we rescued the piano. It looked too nice to take to the dump!

[Bill Kibby]

I regularly get ensnared by pianos that nobody wants, as you can read at

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/norfolk_pia ... _1_3902041

I would like to have photos for my files if you can. There is an explanation at the top of this forum about uploading images. The most common problem is that pictures are too big, so if you don't know how to reduce them, another option is to email them to me.

[Bill Kibby]

Here are some photos showing the whole piano, and the numbers. 1874 would be close to the end of the Cottage Pianos, and it is perhaps an original wooden panel in place of the more usual pierced fretwork. Certainly, in the 1880s, the fronts soon became boarded in, trapping a lot the sound inside, just like modern uprights.