Piano History Museum

[Bill Kibby]

Having spent over ten years planning layouts for buildings that never happened, it is a strange feeling to be actually standing in a large museum time-line space, and not only shifting actual pianos around, (rather than drawings on a screen) but also doing building work, and trying my best to compress fifty thousand images down to about three thousand. Most of our pianos are "normal" for their periods, and I feel it is important for our picture time-line to try to illustrate not only the norm, but also the famous, and the many weird and eccentric ideas that have cropped up in the piano's history. The next barrier will be thousands of pounds for printing, so any donations to

http://www.pianohistory.info/donations.html

would be appreciated. Let me ask forum readers, what things have stuck in your mind as unusual or important in the history of pianos? I have gone a long way towards the design of the picture time-line, but I would love to hear from anyone who has thoughts on particular things they think should be included, including the popular press items. And how about those terrible websites that talk absolute rubbish about pianos, what are their classic blunders so that we can correct them?

[Bill Kibby]

If anyone in England wants to donate non-upright pianos, or pre-victorian instruments, including clavichord or harpichord, I would be pleased to hear from you. It is difficult to find interesting developments at the modern end of things, and we would like to find a Kemble portable in any state.