Kemble & Co. Online Auction, closing 21 Oct 2009

The Kemble & Co. auction, held by GoIndustry DoveBid will take place on 21st October at 12pm BST, including amongst other items, a large number of various woodworking machinery, sanders, moulders, edgers, guillotines, dust extraction systems and forklift trucks that were used at various points over the company’s 98 year history in the UK to produce some of the best-loved pianos of the twentieth century.

At a time when the Victorian-english middle class were desperately trying to conceal their piano legs to prevent the sight of perceived indecency, the musical world was starting to whip up a storm in households everywhere. The popularity of the Lieder and solo piano pieces of Schumann and Schubert, such as Die Schöne Müllerin and the Impromptus had elicited a desire throughout European home-owning communities to enjoy music making as an active hobby, rather than simply as a passive concert-goer. Spurred on by the Industrial revolution, people found that they not only had more time to indulge in their personal lives, but the price of the average mid-range piano fell to levels that enabled people outside of the upper classes and land-owning gentry to buy a mid-range piano - the equivalent of a modern-day Sky-box fitted, HD-ready plasma TV screen (should this be more your cup of tea, feel free to find more details on these sorts of items at our FAB Berlin Auction or in our range of Audio Visual Exchanges!).

Subsequently, in homes and pubs throughout Britain, pianos started to become a mod-con of the early twentieth century. Composers such as Elgar, Debussy, Prokofiev and Strauß started to write piano miniatures and simpler, non-virtuosic pieces for the newfound domestic markets, resulting in publishers such as Boosey and Hawkes, Universal Edition and Durand cashing in on the public excitement.

And so Michael Kemble, in 1911, founded his own piano making business in North London, providing affordable yet quality-produced pianos that could give the people of London, the world-centre of piano-making at the time, and later the whole world, access to buy their very own model. And so the story started. Among the ranks of Bosendorfer, Danemann and later Yamaha, Kemble have produced and continue to produce quality, affordable pianos for several generations of professionals, amateurs and everyone in between, moving in 1960 to new premises under the guidance of Brian Kemble MBE, then already into the third generation.

Kemble won the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement and was, and indeed still is, a key part of the music industry. Various musicians from John Lennon and Bjorn Ulvaeus to Arvo Pärt have said to have owned a Kemble and the motto always seems to ring true that ‘One note and you’ll know it’s a Kemble’.

Throughout the twentieth-century, the art of the song was a direct result of the popularity of the piano, and composers all the way from Mahler, Berlioz, Poulenc, Vaughan Williams and Britten, through to Boy George, Elton John, Alicia Keys and Muse have written songs that rely on the ease-of-access to composition that the piano affords.

Yet, with the rise and popularity of the radio, television and other, less rigour-demanding pastimes, the chances of finding a piano in the average home fell. By the 1990s, the guitar had far out-done the piano in terms of popularity with bands like Oasis, Green Day and Blur sending the instrument to dizzying heights, propelling the guitar to the forefront of the garage-band across the western world. And yet, the piano still holds its place as the instrument that has a fullness of sound across 8 octaves, which the guitar simply cannot match. Only the piano can truly show the talents of composers such as Rachmaninov and Chopin, Takemitsu and Bartok.

And so Kemble has made its mark in history by being the last piano manufacturer in the UK, and will continue to do write history as the maker of affordable, quality pianos at its new production headquarters in the far east, in association with Yamaha. Kemble & Co. have always shown a truly remarkable feat of dedication to production and craftsmanship that should be remembered for the 120,000 pianos they produced during their time in the UK, the majority of which still adorn front rooms and practice rooms the world-over.

For further information on this sale, please contact Leigh McCarron on +44 (0)7901 502682 or visit the auction page by clicking here

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