The Ivory Trade and the State of Connecticut
From the art exhibition Piano As Art at the Flinn Gallery, 2012 Artists Penny Putnam and Shauna Holiman

In 1862, the height of both the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution in the United States, Samuel Merritt Comstock and George A. Cheney joined forces in West Centerbrook, CT (not long after renamed Ivoryton) to form Comstock, Cheney & Company to manufacture ivory goods. Their firm grew rapidly to become one of two largest manufacturers of piano actions and keyboards in the world, the other being Pratt, Read & Company in nearby Deep River, CT. The two towns are near Essex, located on the Connecticut River in Middlesex County. Together the two companies imported over 90% of all unworked ivory that entered the country for the next 60 years and used it in the manufacture of Victorian era ornamental goods such as toothpicks, hair combs, billiard balls, dominoes, letter openers and, most importantly, piano keys. At a time when every self-respecting household had a piano in the parlor, this was big business. (At the turn of the twentieth century when the U.S. population was around 100 million, about 500,000 pianos and organs were sold annually. Today, the number sold is one tenth of that amount even though our population has more than tripled.)

Show more info