Piano 37

Not a real piano on this occasion, but a dream piano, turning up in the course of an excursion into the Parliament Street end of GOGGS (Government Offices, Great George Street), once the home of the Treasury. In the dream, the building looked OK from the outside, but more or less a building site inside, while it was being refurbished. More or less deserted.

But I did come across a rather cheap looking brown wood grand piano. A rather matt finish to it, nothing like the shiny black lacquer of many modern pianos. The keyboard was not locked, but there was no maker's mark above the keyboard that I could see. And no maker's mark anywhere else. The best I could do was a hand written label stuck onto the back of the frame, more or less illegible, but including some impressive looking German words, so I thought it would do: I could always take time and use zoom to decipher the snap later. Unfortunately, the camera on the telephone was playing up, and I was unable to take a suitable close up of the label. Either the light was all wrong, or the camera slipped away to right or to left, or something. Ended up with no snap at all. With the middle aged chap minding the piano not being able to help at all.

At this point, the back of the piano morphed into some complicated bit of fairground machinery, involving a large and ornate engine. Heavy duty undercarriage. Lots of moving parts and lots of elaborate trim of the Victorian cast iron variety. Spit, polish and paint. Lots of steam and lots of hissing.

There were various inscriptions, some cut into the iron, some cast onto the iron, but they were all to do with the manufacturers - engineers rather than piano makers - and the various owners the machinery had had over the years. So nothing doing there either.

But not having scored the piano noticed towards the end of reference 1, I thought it fair to score this one, on grounds of novelty at the very least.

PS 1: Bing failed to turn up an image which really captured the sense of the dream engine, but it did turn up the image included above, from Pinterest, of an old engine. Originally from the engine buffs site at reference 2.

PS 2: I think that I have previously recorded the fact that the No.2 conference room in what was the Treasury end of GOGGS used to contain a Steinway grand, not a brown wood job at all, available to staff at reasonable times. But I have not yet attempted to turn it up.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/lincolnshire-poacher.html.

Reference 2: http://www.wynnshistory.co.uk/. From which I learn that what we have here is 'a Fowler traction engine, bought new in 1920, restored in 1962, now in Cornwall'.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/piano-36.html.