In the last blog, I mentioned taking my pedal harp to Lyon & Healy in Chicago to make the necessary repairs after being transported across country and arriving damaged.

The “other” repair that they made (that I didn’t mention in the last post) was repairing the 24-karat gold column. So, what was wrong with it? The harp had come from my childhood piano teacher and in her harp performances, she always prided herself in memorizing all of her music. She would, however, Scotch tape a songlist to the gold-leaf column to help her remember the songs she wanted to play.

At Lyon & Healy, they said, “Why are there tape marks on the gold?” In other words, don’t do that!!! I explained and they said they would do their best to repair the column.

When I toured the gold gilding area where they would repair the column, there was a thick gold tape across the door with a sign, “Do NOT cross the gold tape.” When I looked in the room, there were beakers of 24-karat gold leaf on the counters. Stealing a beaker would have been worth a lot of money and they had security measures in place to prevent theft. You can be assured I have never taped anything on the gold column of my beautiful, very special pedal harp!

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