Antoine-Jean Denis Bord

Antoine-Jean Denis Bord (Toulouse, 1814 – Paris, 1888) was a French piano manufacturer whose company held considerable weight in the market for affordable instruments during the second half of the nineteenth century. Before setting up on his own in 1843, he learnt his trade in Marseilles and Lyon.

That same year, 1843, he devised the capo tasto, a metal bar that presses the strings downwards, increasing their resistance to the hammers that strike them from below and improving their tone. In 1846 he patented a double-escapement action for grand pianos; this is noteworthy because it incorporated a spiral spring that, over time, passed into the modern mechanisms of upright pianos.

However, the firm's early success was due above all to Bord's business talent. Focusing on the mass production of small, sturdy uprights, he managed to cut costs and give his "pianettes" a reputation as the best cheap instruments available, especially in France and England. Annual output rose from 500 units in 1850 to more than 2,000 by the 1870s.

Around 1880 the limitations of these instruments began to show beside the new German pianos with cross-strung stringing and iron frames. After Bord's death, his successors, despite diversifying the range, failed to regain the firm's prestige outside France. In 1934 the business was acquired by Pleyel.