Twenty years ago I assisted with restoration of a small Chickering Art
Case grand Ampico A that was built for a yacht.  It spent its service
on the boat of the infamous Goat Gland Doctor.

Dr. Brinkley was famous for his patent medicines and an operation
in which he implanted goat gonads into elderly gentlemen to improve
virility.  I don't know how that actually worked with the body's
rejection mechanism.  He was run out of 7 states before he installed
a 1,000,000 watt AM radio station on a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico
where he lived and sold (quack?) medicines on the radio.

This piano had 12 legs, all attached as a unit with runners.  The
piano had to be lifted off this basket and then flipped in mid air to
be moved.  It had thousands of pieces of inlaid wood of 4-6 different
kinds and colors.  Each large square of wood was outlined in gold leaf
which we replaced with new.

The legs were fluted with gold leaf in the flutes and they culminated
at the top in a scallop shell that was also gold leafed.  Last I knew
the piano was sold to someone in Kansas City area.  I have a photo that
I must get into a jpeg image and post sometime soon.

The piano had no casters.  Each leg had a flat piece of metal shaped
like a figure 8.  One loop was about 2 inches and the other loop was
about 1 inch.  Each loop had a countersunk screwhole in it.

It was designed to have the leg sit on the large loop and a screw
up into the leg, and smaller loop showed and allowed the piano to be
screwed down to the floor of the yacht.  This allowed normal pitching
of the boat to not be able to move the piano around the room.

If anyone knows the present whereabouts of this piano I would like
to know.

D. L. Bullock    Piano World    St. Louis