About the Chickering Foundation
Because of his numerous and groundbreaking contributions to the development of the piano as it is known today, Jonas Chickering has frequently been called the “father of the modern piano.” In spite of the undisputed importance and singular role he and the Chickering & Sons company played in American musical and industrial history, his name is all but unknown outside of the piano industry. The Chickering Foundation has been created, therefore, to promote awareness and scholarship of Chickering and to the collection, preservation, and display of their instruments. To be sure, various institutions and organizations hold important Chickering instruments and information among their general collections. The Foundation’s exclusive focus and energetic dedication, however, affords otherwise unattainable results and service to American history. Thus, the Foundation's activities are primarily related to the study and documenting of each Chickering model before ~1890 and the research and dissemination of information relating thereto, particularly compiling and parsing such information from Chickering's ledgers.
Primacy of place in this aspect goes to our work on the sales ledgers of the Chickering instruments. Formerly available only by personal visit to the Research Library of the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the sales ledgers detail the style, sale date, purchaser, purchaser location of nearly every Chickering keyboard instrument of interest by serial number. The Foundation holds digital copies of the sales ledgers for the instruments of interest and makes various detailed studies of them, providing previously-unseen views of the development of Chickering instruments, keyboard instruments of the time, and the industry in general. The Foundation is also working to compile the relevant portion of the sales ledgers electronically to give the public access to them and in a form that is searchable by style, scale design, purchaser, and purchaser location. This will not only greatly extend access of this valuable information, but will enable identification of Chickering instruments otherwise not identifiable.
Having such a registry also enables the accurate determination and identification of instruments the serial numbers of which are not present or legible. This greatly assists in dating and evaluating such instruments.
Finally, the Foundation collects, organizes, and compiles print, digital, and recorded media relating to instruments of interest, with a particular focus on Chickering instruments. We are particularly interested in print catalogs, advertising, and other media produced by Chickering during the relevant historical period.
In parallel with translating the sales ledger data, the Foundation maintains a registry of every identifiable, extant Chickering instrument of interest of which it becomes aware. We carry out this activity primarily through observing the offers, sales, and references to these instruments and through in-person visits to collections or individual instruments where practical. We amplify this effort through personal relationships with related organizations, individual technicians and shops, and private owners throughout the country to register and track instruments not otherwise readily discoverable.
The registry, in combination with the sales ledgers, assists in tracing the provenance of instruments of interest and in filling in notable gaps in the registry (missing original volumes and limits on recorded data). The registry and ledgers should also prove useful in suitably establishing instrument age with respect to importation and transportation of ivory-containing instruments.