An harmonium by D'Almaine & Co in St Andrew's church, Darmsden.
About the makers -
"Maker and dealer of musical instruments and publisher and seller of music, based in London. The name of Thomas D’Almaine (b c1780; d 1866) appears in a succession of trade names, including Goulding Phipps & D’Almaine, 45 Pall Mall (1798–1804); Goulding D’Almaine Potter & Co., 124 Bond Street (c1810–11) and later 20 Soho Square (c1811–23); Goulding & D’Almaine, 20 Soho Square (c1823–34); and D’Almaine & Co., 20 Soho Square (c1834–58) and later 104 Bond Street (c1858–66). Other partners and addresses in London and Dublin are given by Poole.
A catalogue of the firm’s sheet music (London, 1800) contains a three-page listing of instruments, giving prime billing to ‘regular sets of instruments for a military band’. James Wood (fl 1799–1832), an independent and wholesale maker, was the source of the firm’s patent clarinets in 1800; in about 1813 he would be listed as a partner in the firm’s trade name. The 1800 catalogue also includes plainer clarinets, German (transverse) flutes in many sizes and qualities, English flutes (recorders), fifes, English flageolets, bassoons with plain or ‘trumpet’ (brass) bells, tenoroons, English oboes, ‘voxhumain’, serpents, tabor pipes and drums, french horns, trumpets, ‘bugle horns’, hunting horns, kettledrums and other percussion instruments, ‘piano-forte guitars’, aeolian harps, a full line of orchestral string instruments, pianos ‘of every description’, and accessories. Foreign sources of some instruments are implied: French flageolets, Italian oboes, ‘foreign’ French horns, French pedal harps, and imported violin strings.
A price list from about 1839 specifies most of these instruments and adds items such as accordions, bass horns, ophicleides, Spanish guitars, seraphines, and Herz’s Dactylions. It also offers pianos in six forms and various finishes, though not including a concert grand. In published method books, the firm claimed to manufacture trombones, trumpets, and cornopeans. Some D’Almaine instruments, including bassoons, are marked ‘Wood’s Patent’. In the 1839 price list, the bassoons alone are described as ‘foreign’. In an illustration in the pamphlet A Day at a Music Publisher’s (London, 1848), labels indicate that the firm was an importer of violins, guitars, and accordions.
Thomas Mackinlay (d 1866), a nephew of D’Almaine, conducted correspondence from the firm’s address from 1829, and his name appears in some of the firm’s imprints during the 1840s. When D’Almaine retired in 1847, Mackinlay succeeded him. The 1848 pamphlet describes his instrument business as ‘a wholesale warehouse and extensive warerooms containing Wood, Brass and every kind of Musical instrument, manufactured by artizans of superior skill and experience’. The stock of the company was sold at a ten-day auction beginning on 20 May 1867 to Joseph Emery, who continued the business as a piano manufacturer."
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