National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 56 | April 2002


Piano Catalogues: A Window Into Industry, Trade and Australian Social History

Front cover of catalogue Beale & Company

Front cover of catalogue Beale & Company
Beale Australian Pianos
Annandale, NSW: Beale & Co. Ltd, c.1902–1910

Upright Concert Grand: 'Imperial'
Upright Concert Grand: 'Imperial'
Reproduced from
Beale Australian Pianos
Annandale, NSW: Beale & Co. Ltd, c.1902–1910
Interior Appearance of Models 'Harpsichord' to 'Handsome'
Interior Appearance of Models 'Harpsichord' to 'Handsome'
Reproduced from
Beale Australian Pianos
Annandale, NSW: Beale & Co. Ltd, c.1902–1910

The National Library of Australia has recently acquired an exquisite catalogue of Beale Australian Pianos, published around 1903. In excellent condition, it is a rare addition to the Library’s collection of the music and ephemera publications documenting the history of the music industry and trade. The extent and scale of catalogues from many manufacturers and retailers from 1900 to the Great Depression depicts a ‘golden age’ of Australian instrument manufacture and retailing. This particular catalogue presents a superb pictorial representation of the art of piano making in Australia around the turn of the twentieth century:

This catalogue has been produced entirely in Australia ... We believe this to be the first complete piano catalogue ever produced in the world by the three colour process

Its photographs capture the beautiful cabinet making, marquetry, brass fittings and candelabras, as well as elegant designs of concert grand pianos through to upright pianos designed to furnish the family parlour. The technical notes describe the up-to-date technology, including the scientific all-iron tuning system that Octavius Beale patented in 1902, and the details of the Beale Factory characterise the sheer size and scope of this industry of the time.

Octavius Beale founded his firm of piano manufacturers in Annandale, Sydney, in 1893 and it operated until 1961, when cheap imports led to the company being taken over by W.H. Paling & Co. Over this period, Beale’s firm produced approximately 95 000 instruments, making it the largest piano manufacturer in Australia. He focused on local timbers and advertised his instruments as being suited to the changeable Australian climate.

Probably there is no piano factory in the world so completely self-contained as the Beale Factory at Annandale, NSW. Certainly there is none in the British Empire that produces nearly so many parts used in piano making.

With a paucity of overseas suppliers of parts, Beale set out to manufacture every element of his pianos. The range of trades he had to incorporate into his huge factory is astonishing: brass and iron foundries—‘incorporated into only one other piano factory in the world’; power houses; timber yards, stores and mills, joinery works, cabinet departments and veneer works; paint and pattern shops, machine and electroplating departments; keyboard action-making and fitting, tuning and intoning; drying kilns, dustproof polishing rooms, and experimental laboratories.

Perhaps it is not surprising that a flourishing local industry arose as the piano became the centrepiece of social entertainments at home in the later nineteenth century. The French music critic Oscar Comettant, visiting Australia in 1888 to judge at the Melbourne International Exhibition, claimed that Australia had ‘more grand pianos per head of population’ than any other country—it was estimated that by then over 700 000 pianos had been imported from Europe. The height in the popularity of the piano coincided, not surprisingly, with the flourishing of the local sheet music publishing industry, mirroring a worldwide phenomenon. In 1900 the Melbourne music publisher, Allans, sold 100 000 copies of The Australian Music Year Book at approximately one shilling each, and by the 1920s each publication of popular songs and piano music regularly sold up to 100 000 copies.

In this world the piano was indispensable, whether in an aristocratic home or a rural cottage. It provided access to the ‘best of the pops’, to music for dancing and singing after dinner, as well as to the entire mainstream operatic and instrumental repertoire through transcriptions for the piano and ready-made piano rolls for the player pianos. Through its abundant advertising of the piano industry, the vast array of Australian published sheet music held in the Library’s printed music collections is a vital source of information on relative prices of musical instruments, names and addresses of manufacturing firms and retail outlets. The first period of decline of the piano and sheet music trade during the Great Depression—more rapid in Australia than in Europe or America—marked the beginnings of social change in the patterns of home life and domestic entertainment in favour of the radio, the gramophone, television and the computer. Through examining trade catalogues, such as that of the Beale Australian Pianos, and the sheet music collections, we can trace not only such social change but also the rise and fall of related manufacturing industries on a large scale in Australia.
—Robyn Holmes

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: dthomas@nla.gov.au