Showing posts with label Monnington and Weston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monnington and Weston. Show all posts

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Monington and Weston Piano Serial Nos.



Year
Serial No.
Year
Serial No.
1900
21100
1950
67009
1905
27200
1951
67291
1910
33000
1952
67857
1915
41234
1953
68250
1920
43101
1954
68808
1925
44900
1955
69195
1930
49100
1956
69814
1935
56200
1957
71009
1940
64200
1958
71010
1941
65521
1959
71400
1942
66004
1960
71775
1948
66250
1970
74290
1949
66672
1976
75300

These serial numbers can be used only as a reference point.
An Exact date does not make a material difference to an assessment of a piano - a year or so out 120 years ago really is neither here more there.

The idea that 100% accuracy for all piano makers over a century ago is an interesting thought - but considering that all record keeping would be hand-written and kept in large ledger books, inaccuracies are likely. These records will be as reliable as the clerks whose job it was to keep them. The digital age of barcodes and scanned labels was still in the realm of science fiction. So we have to be content with our best guess numbers.

Back to the Piano Atlas

Monday 22 September 2014

Memoirs of an Apprentice Piano Tuner

At the start of my apprenticeship - back in 1973, pianos were still being made in the UK. In those early days I was bewildered by the sheer number of piano names. When the older apprentices talked about these obscure and odd-sounding names, it was almost like listening to a foreign language. Strange how quickly one makes sense of these things. Very soon I was spouting the same in-house piano-speak and relishing the idea of confusing any unfortunate outsider in ear shot.

There was an unofficial rating system of the pianos in the shop - rated by the accumulated experience of young apprentices! From memory, the order from the preferred to the unfavoured was something like: Welmar,  Knight, Kemble, Monnington & Weston, Eavestaffe, Barrett & Robinson, Zender, Bentley. (This order might be disputed by others.)  

I do not remember seeing new European pianos in the shop other than the occasional Zimmerman - but down in the workshop among the apprentices, these were not liked at all. 

The nearest piano factory to where I lived was Bentley's at Stroud. We occasionally passed it while en route to Cheltenham on the A46 but because the Bentley pianos of the 70s were never well thought of, their factory at Woodchester did not particularly capture my interest.

Our workshop was beneath the grand Georgian streets of Bath. We sometimes referred to it as the crypt. The workshop itself had plenty of daylight - about half the area of roof/ceiling was of glass which was likely to leak when the weather was bad. On summer afternoons, while still working, we would gently cook in the sun's heat which was magnified through the glass.

The warehouse/store next to the workshop had no natural light at all and was poorly lit, dusty and full of old pianos in for storage or repair. The air was thick with the smell of bone glue, piano felt and dust - a unique blend of aromas which belongs only in piano workshops.

On my very first day, I was given a job cleaning action parts. The foreman was an older local guy who talked with the broadest Somerset accent I'd ever heard. He asked me a question which even in my extreme effort to be polite I could not decipher, so I had to say "Pardon?" Clearly annoyed, he looked at me suspiciously and said very slowly and deliberately, "So you think you've got good ears then?" I gave the only answer a young boy who wanted to be a piano tuner could give: "Yes!"  


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