John Spencer & Co.

[Kirstenfaith]

Hello! Like many, I’m just looking to see if I can find the date my piano was made. I’ve been told by an experienced tuner here in Australia that it is late 1800’s.

Any info or even guesses would be appreciated! I’ve tried to attach pictures.

It’s a John Spencer & Co with overdamper upright with the serial number 1385.

[Bill Kibby]

When it comes to Spencer I think it is fair to say I have more of their pianos on file than anyone else, and it is very unusual to have any doubt about Spencer numbers, but this one is much earlier than the published information. Spencer & Co. established their factory at Goodinge Road in 1883, just getting started at a time when cottage pianos were going out of fashion, so they made very few of those, but the published dates of numbers for Spencer don’t begin until #25,000 in 1895, and even these seem to be wrong. What we do know is that by 1909, the numbers had reached 52,000, suggesting that they got through an average of two thousand numbers per year, although this is unlikely to represent real production. On this basis, #1385 would be from 1883, but it would be interesting to see what the whole piano looks like on the outside, as compared to the Cottage Pianos at
http://www.pianohistory.info/victorian.html