J. Ramsperger & Co. Stuttgart

[firemand]

I bought an old piano that I'm told is from the 1800's. research on this one has come up pretty dry, but the best I can determine so far is that it was made in Germany before 1903 when the company folded.

- It has the number 6793 branded into the inside of the body on the left land side
- The 1st key, on one side has 5695 and an undecipherable word that looks almost like Geiger both in pencil
- The other side of the first key has a couple letters in handwritten style but look like they may be a stamp. A.B.G? The A is clear, the others are hard to say what they are for sure.
- The underside of the nameboard has 569.x written in pencil

I hired a guy to do some restoration on it, and when we took off the harp/hammer board we found this:
- Oscar Kohler Berlin no 299180 in an obsious ink stamp
- and beside that in what looks like blue pencil a handwritten (hard to make out) Life. eng. 11./6/07.R
- and a 25523 stamped directly below (not shaded in, just punched in the wood)

I'll be happy to add some pictures if you need, but any help would be very much appreciated.
Thanks

[Bill Kibby]

The majority of pianos cannot be reliably dated by numbers, and even if we could work out which number is the serial number, I don't think anyone has published dates for Ramsperger, but some of his pianos certainly seem to be later than 1903.

It is not possible to tell you anything about an individual piano just from the name, for example is this an upright piano? Have a look at
http://www.pianohistory.info/edwardian.html

Photos that show what the whole piano looks like would be helpful. However, I have included some dates of Kohler's numbers about halfway down my Numbers page at
http://www.pianohistory.info/numbers.html
and these suggest that your piano was made in 1906. Handwritten information cannot be relied upon, because it is not usually from the manufacturers, but 1907 seems reasonable.

[firemand]

I'll upload a few pictures.

[firemand]

[firemand]

[firemand]

[firemand]

Bill do these pictures help? I also spotted this image in the Edwardian link in the "German pianos of the 1890's" collage. It looks remarkably like mine.
What do you think?

[Bill Kibby]

Yes, thanks for the photos, but that page also says that Edwardian pianos hadn't changed much since the 1890s, and the 1906 is the best and most reliable clue we have. Often, old pianos have no clues whatsoever. I have amended the wording to emphasise the fact that pianos didn't suddenly change because of a new century, or a new English monarch.