I am often asked “How did you become a harpsichord maker?” The answer is a combination of my background plus a chance event.
I was brought up in a small house in Lancashire with a musical older brother Roger Smalley (a composer and pianist). Like it or not, this exposed me to a great deal of keyboard music from an early age. My Father was a very practical science teacher with an interest in woodwork. After watching, and later helping, him to make furniture for home, scientific apparatus for school and radios etc just for fun, it seemed natural that I should study engineering and enter the profession.
Many years later I became interested in Early Music and was involved in the formation of an Early Music Society in Salisbury. It was at one of their events in 1987 at Odstock Manor that I helped to carry a harpsichord upstairs to the concert room with (it later turned out) James Mogford, the maker of the instrument. Being an engineer, I naturally had to find out exactly how it was made and worked! From that moment I was 'hooked', and decided to make a harpsichord.
Musical instrument making soon developed into a hobby and I attended several courses at West Dean College, near Chichester. Later, I gave up my job as the Technical Director of a local electronics company to make early keyboard instruments full time.
In 1999, my wife Gail and l moved into the beautiful Chalke Valley,
near Salisbury, where we converted a courtyard of farm buildings
into a house, self-catering guest accommodation
(Ebblesway Courtyard) and a workshop where
we now live and work.
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