Robert Wornum
[3] Piano historian Alfred J. Hipkins wrote the younger Wornum was originally intended for the church,[4] but by 1810 had the position of foreman at music sellers Wilkinson & Company at 3 Great Windmill Street and 13 Haymarket.
Southwell, who was said to have made the first cabinet upright in 1790,[6] described that it was "so constructed as to prevent the possibility of its being so frequently out of tune", and without "any opening or perforation between the sound-board and the pin block", although his 1807 patent only claimed a new arrangement of its dampers.
The Monthly Magazine reported in May, 1808 that Wilkinson & Co. offered to the public "a New Patent, Cabinet Piano-forte", and described that its form was "as curious as convenient," occupying no more room than the smallest bookcase, while its tone was both brilliant and delicate, its touch "peculiarly facile and pleasant" and claimed the strength and simplicity of its construction would tend "to ensure its keeping in tune longer than most other instruments.
"[7] The Quarterly Musical Register described in early 1812 that by then these instruments were manufactured by other firms as well, and commented "whether they will be adopted as preferable to the square piano forte, time must shew.
[18][19] One of the firm's cabinet uprights was illustrated in the February 1812 issue of The Repository of Arts under the heading "Fashionable Furniture", with the explanation that these had become a much requested item due to their improvements which "procured this instrument a very high degree of reputation".
[28] Low vertically strung uprights with similar construction had been introduced with patented features in 1800 by Matthias Mueller in Vienna and John Isaac Hawkins in Philadelphia[29] and London.
Mueller's piano was described in the 1810 Oekonomische Encyklopädie as having a tone similar to a basset horn, and he offered a tandem model for performing duets he called the Ditanaklasis[31] while Hawkins' piano featured a complete iron frame with an open back, a large, independent sounding board, and bass strings in the form of coil springs[13] and it included mechanical tuners, a retractable keyboard, and a metallic upper bridge.
[33] According to the report of the patent in The Quarterly Musical Magazine it was intended to prevent the falling of the middle and upper octaves which the article described were the result of the usual practice of employing different tensions and sizes of wire in different parts of the piano, and the author reported that by his method Wornum was able to produce tones that were "firm, sonorous, and brilliant, and their standing warranted the highest opinion of the principle";[34] the review in The London Journal of Arts and Sciences predicted, however, that "if it [could] ever be brought into use" it would "give a bad tone to the upper part of the instrument", and among the objections the reviewer anticipated, he claimed that it would be difficult to determining string lengths using Wornum's method, as well as in "procuring wires all of one size".
[36] Another correspondent on pianos who signed as "The Harmonious Blacksmith" wrote in an 1871 letter to the English Mechanic and World of Science that his "late friend"[37] Wornum had used no.15 wire throughout, which in the 1820s and 1830s was at least four sizes larger than the wire normally used for the highest notes[38] and several sizes larger even than those in the much longer and higher tensioned scales used at the time of the article,[39] and he described that it gave "a very good treble, but a very poor tenor and bass.
[19] According to Hipkins Wornum had perfected the crank, or "tied" double action during this year, and introduced it in his cabinet and three feet eight inch tall (112 cm),[48] piccolo uprights by 1830.
He advertised that these reduced prices were in response to the success of his piccolo piano which had "induced certain manufacturers to announce and sell instruments of a different character under the same name, by which the public [was] deceived",[66] but by the following year offered more expensive versions of the larger models.
[69][70] By 1840 Wornum had improved his grand actions by adding a sustaining spring tying the hammer butt and the short end of the crank lever, intended to improve repetition and "assist in the forte,"[71] but eventually abandoned the inverted construction due to its inconvenient form[18] and turned his attention instead to manufacturing "overstruck" or downstriking horizontal pianos, where the hammers are located above the strings.
[74] Their Albion semi-grand was noted as a good example of how the downstriking action allowed for a simpler and more economical construction without metallic bracing,[18] and they were awarded a prize medal for their improved piccolo piano—placing them after Erard, of Paris and London, who won the council medal for pianos, and at the same level as twenty-two other piano manufacturers, including Broadwood & Sons of London, Schiedmayer & Söhne, Stuttgart, Pape, Paris, and Jonas Chickering, Boston.
[90] A reporter for the Journal of the Society of Arts on the Second Annual International Exhibition held in London in 1872, however, described the tone of the wooden frame pianos the firm displayed as "sweet, but hardly full or forcible enough.
[94] This placed them again at the same level as Brinsmead (though this firm's founder was awarded the medal of the Legion of Honor on the same occasion),[95] as well as Kriegelstein, Paris and Charles Stieff, Baltimore.
"[4] According to Frank Kidson the firm was "still an important one in the pianoforte trade" in early 1900,[97] but Harding lists this year as their last entry in the London directories as piano manufacturers.
