Hi Digesters! The story about the drawing on the pinblack brings to mind the 1864 Steinway square I was working on several years ago. The owners had bought it at an estate sale, becasue the historical record for our Gold Rush era town mentioned such a piano in the parlor of the house they were renovating. I was cleaning the keys, and on the side of the #1 key I found a slogan written in beautiful longhand with a pencil. Where normally you would expect to fing a name and date was this slogan: "Hurrah for Honest Old Abe! Hurrah for Honest Old Grant!" It seems that this piano was made right after one of Grant's earliest victories as head of the Union army, and this unknown man on the Steinway line commemorated it in a way that usually a piano tecnician would be the only one to find. Needless to say, the owners were tickled pink to have such a historical bit of evidence in their piano, and called the local newspaper, who ran and article with myself holding the historic key. I guess that was my 15 minutes of fame. Patrick Poulson, RPT
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