ABOUT US

This website is posted by Michael Cole, who has a workshop in Prestbury, Gloucestershire.

It is intended to give you information about historic keyboard instruments and to be as informative and reliable as possible. This is not secondary information, drawn from other books and websites, but is a selection of materials personally researched in the course of my work for museums and private clients over several decades.

As a maker, my first instruments were reproductions of  eighteenth-century harpsichords made by Jacob Kirckman in London, and spinets by Thomas Hitchcock. Some years earlier I was inspired by Raymond Russell's excellent book The Harpsichord and Clavichord which he modestly subtitled 'a preliminary survey'. For those of us who were accustomed to 1960s harpsichords (made by commercial piano makers using modern designs and materials) the instruments shown in Russell's photographic plates were utterly beguiling. A few years later came Frank Hubbard's Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making, which was very strong on accurate historical source material, supplemented by some excellent technical drawings made by Hubbard's father.

My first book The Pianoforte in the Classical Era was intended to take a similar approach to the early pianos which made such an impact on European musical culture in the last third of the eighteenth century, and beyond. It was very difficult to persuade any publisher to take it so after several refusals it languished for nearly four years before the intervention of a friend convinced Oxford University Press to look at it again. Though they accepted it, they could not be persuaded to undertake a sufficient print run. For an 'academic' publisher committing to a print run of two thousand seemed to them far too ambitious. Nevertheless, they shifted all they had printed, one thousand, in two years, and consequently since 2002 the book has been available only on their 'print on demand' system, which is very frustrating for the author and potential readers. The production quality is much inferior too. Most second hand copies, which were better produced than the POD examples, have ridiculously inflated prices. Naturally, I would now like to revise some sections in the light of more recent research but this is also on hold. 

The response from performing musicians as well as academics was very encouraging. The same is true of numerous papers I have published, details of which you can find on this website. My very first publication A Handel Harpsichord was prompted by my work at the Bate Collection, Oxford in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Harpsichords made by Michael Cole include four copies of the William Smith 'Handel harpsichord', the best of which is probably the one in Switzerland. The others are in Scotland, Wales and London. Harpsichords in the Italian style include a green-painted specimen which has been used by many period instrument ensembles, including Ex-Cathedra and the Gabrieli Consort, and a very stylish harpsichord made entirely from Cedar which attracted great interest when it appeared in a London auction room (in a forlorn condition) a few years ago. In the French style many concert goers will have seen a Dresden blue and gilt double manual, often played by my son Dr Warwick Cole, whose website you can find by clicking here.

I hope that you find some useful material on this website. I have taken a lot of trouble to ensure that all factual material is accurate and informative, but if you find something that you want to question, or material that you want to re-use elsewhere, please be sure to check with me first.

You can find my address and telephone number on the CONTACT page.

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