THE PERIOD PIANO COLLECTION

 Performing - Studying - Exhibiting - Conserving

A 501(c)3 Non-Profit Corporation    email contact

        Bill Shull, RPT, M.Mus.  Founder and President

       610 Amigos Dr C,  Redlands, CA  92373  909 796-4226     PERIOD PIANO CENTER SINCE 2006                       

We seek to rediscover the art of the piano as the composer heard it on the instruments of the time;  to collect and study the instruments themselves, conserving many for history, and performing on many, so we might rediscover history’s magic.  We exhibit and curate instruments, tell the great stories of piano and society, and study the history of the piano, its technology and its builders.

Above:  1875 Steinway Monitor Grand #31102 as donated to Period Piano with 20th century cabinet restyling.  This piano cabinet was originally Rosewood with cabriole legs and lyre,  arm carvings, double beading and scroll music desk. 

The Monitor Grand was in many ways a first for Steinway and for piano history.

Above:  Rare 1871 Patent action by Theodore Steinway found in #31102. This action has the tubular metalllic action frame, but has no whippens.  Instead it has an English action with the jack mounted on the key.  The greatness of this action is in a wholesale dedication to low inertia and devices to aid in repetition.  It also has an unusual device:  a coil spring mounted in the backcheck!

Below:  The Monitor Grand in the William Seward House in Auburn NY #26608.  This is what Steinway #31102 looked like before cabinet modification.  Exhibitions | Seward House Museum

Below:  Plan view photo of the Seward House Monitor grand.  This is the first Steinway production grand model (and possibly the earliest in history)  with a full cast iron plate, with the pinblock structurally connected to the plate rather than the stretcher (the stretcher has become non-structural), and the first cupola-plate Steinway in production.  It is also an ancestor to the model B (1878), sharing the string scale, the ring bridge, and the action template. 

Another view of the #31102 action stack alone.  This simple English action also has:

1.  Balance spring with adjustable touch

2.  Adjustable jack limiting rod (keeps jack engaged)

3.  Nearly no lead in keys, with very light touch

4. Coil spring in backcheck