Interlude

I mentioned in one of the posts below that I don't have much time to give this project, and indeed, I've been a bit swamped at work since the last post and have not been able to turn my attention to the harmonium again.  There it sits in my music room, wanting attention.  This is frustrating, but such is my life at the moment.

Finally, this morning, I had a few minutes that I could devote to the instrument.  My exploration this morning is zeroing in on the metallic fabric remnants attached to the underside of the music rack.  I am pretty sure that, at one time, a panel of fabric was stretched across the bottom of the music rack, and would have hidden the backs of the keys, as the red fabric is doing in this picture of a harmonium I found online:

Not my harmonium!  A picture I found online that clearly shows red fabric stretched across the opening
in the music rack frame, to hide the backs of the keys.  I believe fabric was used here (rather than, for instance,
a solid piece of wood), because if this harmonium is like mine, the forté shutters are directly under
the keyboard, so the sound, in part, comes up through the back of the keys, and a piece of wood, rather
than fabric, would muffle the sound.

 But the question is: what was the fabric? Here is the underside of the frame that supports the music rack.  Although fragments of the gold metallic cloth are still attached to the bottom of the frame, one can also clearly see the remains of a red fabric glued to the perimeter of the opening:

The bottom side of the music rack frame.

Here are two close ups:

Was the red fabric the original (as in the top photo above)?  Did it rot, and then someone added the gold fabric, securing it with tacks?  If this is so, I would expect that the red fabric would have been trimmed, and would have some sort of a straight edge all the way around -- but it doesn't.  If the red fabric isn't the original, but rather is some sort of a treatment that supported the stretched gold fabric, why was that treatment necessary?

Even as I'm writing this, and especially, considering the top photo above (and other photos that show red or green fabric in that area), I'm beginning to think that the red fabric was indeed original.  By the time the gold fabric was installed, the red fabric could have rotted and disintegrated somewhat, which would explain the lack of a trimmed straight edge.  Also, it appears that the red fabric was carefully stretched and glued across the opening, which I would expect from a high-end 19th-century German harmonium builder; but the gold fabric was simply tacked in place, which looks like the work of an amateur.  

So back to my post about a restoration philosophy: I think, in this instance, I might not be doing too much damage if I remove the gold fabric remnants and stretch and glue into place a piece of red fabric similar to what I think is the original.  I welcome comments about that!

Thus ends this brief post ... hope I can get to this more frequently!  But, you know, I'm a church musician and December, with its demands, approaches ....

Cleaning the keyboard--some photos

Hanging from the music rack assembly--this piece of fabric:

 

It's hard to get a photo that captures the look of this piece of fabric.  It has metallic threads, which leads me to think it must be more recent than the harmonium--but my partner thinks that fabric such as this might have been available in the late 19th-century.  I only bring this up because, as I remove the keys to clean them, amidst the dirt under the keys are strands of metallic thread, which I assume is from this fabric:

A close up of these strands, modeled by Walter:

What was this fabric for?  Since the back of the keyboard is not finished, and since, in the condition I bought the harmonium in, the back of the keyboard is completely visible, and since the one remaining swath of fabric is hanging from the music deck assembly, which floats over the keyboard, I wonder if there was originally an expanse of this metallic fabric that hid the back of the keys from view?  Is this typical of these instruments?  More research needed here.

Meanwhile, here's the back of some of the keys:

There is a spacer surrounding the back pin.  Some of these spacers are glued tightly to the key, although the ones in this photo are all loose, and one is broken.  I'm not sure what their function is.  There is a rail that runs over the back of the keyboard--maybe these spacers keep the rail from settling onto the pins?  In any case, I will repair these if necessary and glue them all back.  Meanwhile, as I remove the keys, each of the loose spacers is going into its own ziplock bag with a label indicating which keys it belongs to:

I'm removing each key and giving it the most gentle cleaning: dusting off the debris, wiping it with a damp cloth, and then storing it in a box.  Note the slot cut into the 10th key from the top: this provides space for the bass forté lever to pass through.

The keys, thus far, have no markings on them at all.  As I remove and clean them, I'm labeling them, in pencil, on their undersides:

 

I finally have removed all the keys from C up through f1, and have exposed the bass forté swell shade.  The lever which opens it (and which passes through the indentation in key #10 as noted above), is clearly visible:

The forward side of the swell shade is leathered; the leather at the treble end is broken and needs to be replaced:

A side view of the keyboard.  Keys C through f1 have been removed; shown here are f#1 and higher.  Note that the keys are carved to provide space underneath them for the movement of the bass and treble forté swell shades.