John Anderson

Biography

John Anderson began work at age twelve in the Royal Gardens of Stockholm, later apprenticing at fourteen to Knut Egberg, cabinet-maker to the Court of Sweden, where he won a silver medal from the Society of Mechanics of Stockholm. In 1880 he left Stockholm to study cabinet-making abroad, working in Copenhagen, Berlin (where he received a Swedish government stipendium), Vienna, Munich, Zurich, Paris, and London before returning to Stockholm in 1883. In 1884 he emigrated to New York, where he began designing art piano cases and then worked for Decker Brothers, Albert Weber, and Steinway and Sons to learn piano building. He drew his first piano scale in 1888 for the Shaw piano of Erie, Pa. A planned 1892 venture with his brother Gustav to open a factory in Rockford, Ill. collapsed in the 1893 panic. In 1894 he moved to Minneapolis to build the Anderson piano for the Century Piano Company, and in 1899 the Everett Piano Company of Boston hired him to take charge of its factories, where he rebuilt the plant and designed the Everett Concert Grand Piano, praised by pianists including Gabrilowitsch, Teresa Carreno, Dr. Otto Neitzel, and Alfred Reisenauer. He also designed the Sheridan Art Grand piano case, featured in Volume I of this work. John Anderson served as superintendent of the Everett Piano Company, where his artistry helped Frank A. Lee achieve his goal of making pianos of the highest artistic order. Through their combined efforts the Everett concert grand eventually came to be used by leading virtuosos including Reisenauer, Dr. Neitzel, Chaminade, and Carreno, gaining the piano's admission among the world's foremost brands. John Anderson is named as the designer of the Sheraton-style grand piano produced by the Everett Company, one of the examples of art-piano work discussed in the chapter. The instrument's decorative paintings were executed by Samuel Hayward, and the piece is presented as a specimen of the Everett Company's art department output alongside other leading firms' art grands. John Anderson was engaged by Adin Marshall Wright as factory superintendent after Wright decided a better grand piano could be built than the one Ossip Gabrilowitsch had toured with. Given Wright's ideas about tone and tone quality, Anderson built a grand piano that virtuoso Alfred Reisenauer, on his sensational American tour, pronounced "tadellos" (flawless).

Highlights

• Designed the Sheraton-style grand piano produced by the Everett Company, with paintings by Samuel Hayward
• Superintendent whose artistry assisted Frank A. Lee in bringing the Everett piano to concert-grade recognition
• Rose from a boyhood job in the Royal Gardens of Stockholm to become a master cabinetmaker and, eventually, a master piano scale designer
• Designed the scale of the Everett Concert Grand Piano and the art case of the Sheridan Art Grand piano
• Took charge of Everett Piano Company's Boston factories in 1899, rebuilding them to his own specifications
• Engaged by Adin M. Wright as factory superintendent and built a grand piano praised as "tadellos" (flawless) by virtuoso Alfred Reisenauer

Source

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911); Vol. II (1913), pp. 84, 85, 86, 87, 152.

Public domain.