Restoration of a Hagen, part 2

On the 'medal' was the the following text readible: '....ertig aus der K.K. Landesfabrik des M Mü..er in W....'. This made it easy to look in lists of Viennese builders, which brought us to Matthias Müller, one of the great - K.(aiserlich) K.(öniglich) builders of his day.

Martha Clinkscale's book, Makers of the Piano, mentions an instrument of Matthias Müller that bears exactly the same inscription. This intrument was unfortunately destroyed in the war. For reference we would have loved to see that piano. Another instrument by Müller is in 'Das Historische Museum' in Frankfurt, Germany. We were kindly welcomed to see and examine this piano. A wonderful instrument which was built a few years later then ours. We were very happy to measure and photograph it.

On our instrument a few things are missing: music stand, pedals/stretcher/lyre, treble dampers. Now it is completely taken apart and it is time to start solving problems... The pinblock was cracked and we took the veneer of, and the yoke and the top layer, to be able to route out a cracked piece and replace it. After that, the original top layer, yoke and veneers were glued back. The piano suffered from some very bad repairs in the past, trying to modernize it a bit, even an iron bar was added between the hitchpin rail and the the yoke of the pinblock. We are not going to put that one back! To be able to get to the ribs on the soundboard, somebody in the past made two holes in the bottom (some coarse words would be appropriate here) and glued two terribly crude pieces of wood underneath. Fortunately we were able to disassemble the soundboard and solve all the added glue without damage.

To be continued...