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| Custom toolbox created by piano builder Henry Studley |
The history of H.O. Studley and his tool chest
Massachusetts piano maker Henry Studley built his magnificent tool chest
over the course of a 30-year career at the Poole Piano Company. The
chest lived on the wall near his workbench, and he worked on it
regularly, making changes and adding new tools as he acquired them.
Using ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, rosewood, and mahogany -- all
materials used in the manufacture of pianos -- he refined the chest to
the point that now, more than 80 years after his death, it remains in a
class of its own.
Packing more tools per
square foot than seems physically possible, piano maker Henry Studley's
unrivaled tool chest also manages to be beautiful in the process. The
chest stands as perhaps the most exquisite example of 19th-century
tool-chest craftsmanship.
Considering how many tools it
holds, the famous chest is really quite small; when closed, it is just 9
in. deep, 39 in. high, and just more than 18 in. wide. Yet it houses so
many tools -- some 300 -- so densely packed that three strong men
strain to lift it.
For every tool, Studley fashioned a holder to
keep it in place and to showcase it. Miniature wrenches, handmade saws,
and some still unidentified piano-making tools each have intricate
inlaid holders. Tiny clasps rotate out of the way so a tool can be
removed. In places the clearances are so tight that the tools nearly
touch. The chest, which hangs on ledgers secured to a wall, folds closed
like a book. And as the chest is closed, tools protruding from the left
side nestle into spaces between tools on the right side. Amazingly,
despite being so densely packed, the tools are all easily accessible.
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| Custom calipers by H.O. Studley |
Studley
was well into his 80s when he retired from the piano company. Before he
died in 1925, Studley gave the tool chest to a friend. That man's
grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian National
Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s and
later sold it to a private collector in the Midwest. That owner again
sold the tool chest to another private collector, where it now resides.
Almost lost among the tools but no longer
obscure to history, the name of the maker, H. O. Studley, and his
Massachusetts hometown of Quincy are engraved on small plates just above
his brace. Scraps of ebony, ivory, rosewood, and mother-of-pearl left
over from his work as a piano maker gave Studley raw material for his
tool chest and many of the tools it contains.
