Jean-Henri Pape

Jean-Henri Pape, born as Johann Heinrich Pape and also known as Henry Pape (1 July 1789 – 2 February 1875), was a French maker of pianos and harps in the early 19th century.

Pape was born in Sarstedt, Germany, in 1789. He arrived in Paris in 1811 and secured employment with Pleyel, whose piano workshops he directed for several years. In 1815, he established his own company to manufacture pianos and improved them with new inventions almost annually for nearly forty years. His first grand pianos followed the English system of Broadwood and Tomkinson. It was not long before he modified and then completely changed their principles of construction. Pape concentrated on defects in square and grand pianos caused by the structural gap between the sounding board and wrest plank that allowed the hammers to strike the strings, following the solution of placing actions above the strings that had been imagined by Marius, then Hildebrand and finally Streicher in Vienna. Instead of levers and counterweights, Pape's arrangement used a coil spring to raise the hammers quickly and with almost no effect. This system was very successful in squares but less so in grand pianos. The variations he introduced in the forms and actions of upright pianos gave his instruments remarkable power.

His instruments received favorable reports from the Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale on 19 September 1832 and from l'Académie des beaux-arts de l'institut de France in 1833, and he earned a gold medal at the French Industrial Exposition of 1834, as well as a medal of the Legion of Honor in 1839. Skilled in every aspect of mechanics, Pape invented a machine used to saw wood or ivory in spirals and exhibited its results in 1827. One of his pianos was veneered with sheets of ivory nine feet long and two feet wide. He created pianos with asymmetrical cases, like the "giraffe piano." A small pamphlet commemorated his contributions to the instrument. Pape’s students included the German piano makers Carl Bechstein and Frederick Mathushek.



Pape could not cope with the increasing industrialisation in the production of pianos. When he died on 2 February 1875 in the Paris suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine, where he had continued research into the construction of the instrument, he was impoverished. His son and nephew managed the factory after his death.