Summary

One of the ways that sheet music produced from about 1700 to 1920 was by printing from engravings on metal plates using a set of tools such as this. This set of tools was mostly used by Gordon Baker who worked for A. Kynoch & Co. Pty. Ltd. in Melbourne. The manufacturer of the tools was a New York based firm called Schirmer although the vendor states that the tools were made in Germany and were purchased second hand by Kynoch's first engraver, Bert Price, who bought them to Australia.

Gordon Baker was apprentice to his father Jack, and was for awhile the only music engraver working in Australia. Gordon was apprenticed in about 1934 and worked for the firm until 1984 or 1985.

Engraving ceased in 1984/5 when the three full-time engravers retired and the firm could not persuade anyone to take on the seven-year apprenticeship! Cheaper and same quality printing from Korea at that time became viable and so the engraver's art was lost to Allan and Company, and Kynoch Ltd. The Korean method involved stamps with the tails, expression marks and slurs added by hand. It was much cheaper and quicker than the engraving method. This type of music publishing through engraving also suffered to a large extent from the proliferation of the photocopier in the mid 1980s. By the end of the 20th Century, music was printed using a computer and printer.

The earliest known practical music to be produced on metal plate is from about 1536. The first account of the methods of music engraving appears in L'Encyclopedie about 1750. Engraving tools are described and pictured which are alike in detail when compared to this set.

Physical Description

Music engraving set comprising: 1. Music punches - box with 70 punches. 2. Music punches - box with 45 punches. 3. Engraver's hammer. 4. Box with stave cutters - not located 5. Music punches - box with 14 punches. 6. Leather punch pad 7. Pewter printing plates - 3 8. Litho stone. 9. Sheet music for examinations 10. * 11. Pewter Printing Plate 12. Pewter Printing Plate 13. Stave line cutter 14. Stave line cutter 15. Stave line cutter 16. Scraping tool 17. Stave line cutter 18. Vertical line cutter 19. Handle 20. Base clef punch 21. Treble clef punch

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