arrived from England, the young pianist was greeted at the front door of the Chickering factory by Jonas Chickering in his work apron and tools in his hand. The reluctance of these craftsmen to adapt to the standardisation of piano parts manufacturing by specialized factories is described here by Loesser-

As executives these men brought with them the craftmen’s devotion to
workmanship, his happiness in knowing that he has used his own hands to
do a fine job to which he is proud to affix his own name for all to read’²³

It was necessary to put a brake on the exuberant inventiveness of the XIXth century craftsmen and move on to rational, industrial production. Piano makers conformed progressively to the technologies of the most enterprising and well-established manufacturers of the era. Inevitably, the sonority of pianos lost its diversity to a common esthetic. Since then, the trend of standardization has been validated by the explosion of production in Asia, where the base model is
conscientiously reproduced.²⁴

Wayne Stuart and the French string manufacturer Stephen Paulello have continued developing their craft in the pre-standardised spirit of ‘exuberant inventiveness’. Paulello and Stuart do not plan to produce the ultimate finished product of piano design. They are both ‘taking up the experimental challenge of piano making,from the point where it came to a halt’²⁵.

The industrialization of piano manufacturing during the 20th century abdicated the critical aesthetic choices to mechanical engineers and non piano building related disciplines. This has produced so called piano makers unable to realise a workable, individual design. Thus, copying of derivative designs and adherence to past ideologies in an attempt to hold onto the so called core essence of what many believe the acoustic piano to be, underpins a crisis in potency and direction.²⁶

After Stuart’s experience of the international piano manufacturing industry, he returned to Australia to direct the piano technology department at the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music ²⁷, and the North Melbourne Institute of Technical and Further Education,also known as Preston TAFE. Stuart initiated his experiments in expanding the dynamic and frequency range of the piano during his tenure at the Melbourne institution.²⁸

²³Athur Loesser. Men, Women and Piano : A Social History(Dover Publications,1954), 525.
^{24     3}3Paulello, “concept page.”
^{25     4}Paulello, “concept page.”
²⁶Wayne Stuart, “Stuart & Sons – A Bright Light in a Stagnant Pond”Piano InFoRoom(blog).February 2013, http://pianoinforoom.blogspot.de/2013/02/stuart-sons-pianos-bright-light-in.html
²⁷now the Sydney Conservatorium of Music
²⁸Brendan Ward. The Beethoven Obsession.(Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2013),chpt 7.