George Rogers upright

[Mick Coggins]

Dear All,

I have a G Rogers & Sons London Serial 13484 upright piano walnut inlaid with 2 double sconces. I purchased it in about 1995 from a antique shop in Coventry who informed me that it had been in a Public School. The Serial number is 13484 and I was informed by a website about 20 years ago that the manufacture date was 1888. It has been professionally refurbished and is not bad to play although some of the action takes a bit of getting used to. Tuned to a quarter of a tone below modern concert pitch which I believe only started in the 1920s as it would put too much strain on the frame to tune to concert pitch. I wonder whether you could refer me to a website/company that can obtain the original sale record of the piano at about this time and the purchasers name and anything more about it. I am willing to pay for such a report.

Mick Coggins
Rothwell, Northamptonshire

[Bill Kibby]

My Archives page
http://www.pianohistory.info/archives.html
explains that very few piano makers' archives have survived, and I am not aware of any for Rogers, so the kind of information you are hoping for is simply not available for most pianos. Dating a piano purely on the basis of numbers is often not as simple as it seems, but 1888 seems possible. General information on Victorian uprights may be found at
http://www.pianohistory.info/victorian.html
and it explains that the 1880s was a period of experimenting, evolving from Cottage Pianos to the more familiar uprights. What you have been told about pitch is misleading, and any piano you find outside a museum will have been made capable of tuning to A440, but a lot depends on its condition, and raising it in one tuning is risky.

[Bill Kibby]

Yesterday, I tuned this piano, and although I could find no evidence to support it having been "fully restored" internally, it was polished and looking pretty on the outside. My instant impression was that the case might be a little too fancy to be Edwardian, so I was thinking 1890s, although it turns out that the published dates of serial numbers suggest that it was actually made in 1887. The rust on the strings and wrestpins was threatening trouble, and the tuning was a struggle, but it is playable, and not so bad for its considerable age. How many wrestplanks from 132 years ago are any use at all? The overdamper action appears to be German, and like so many of these cheap German actions of the period, it is now very fragile. The transfer on the fall (keyboard lid) boasts a "Prize Medal" but is coy about giving any details, and since I have so far found no record of Rogers receiving medals, perhaps it was a small local exhibition somewhere.