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Custom toy pianos are local artist’s forte
By Debby Woodin
dwoodin@joplinglobe.com
For cow punchers fresh off the dusty trail, there’s the “Little Buck-a-roo” mirror-lined saloon.
Grandma gets “The Little Blue Bird,” the pet name her suitor gave her as he flirted with her at a Carthage park.
A replica of a 1955 Chevy once owned by Grandpa drew a tear to his eye when Dianne Cantrell presented it to him.
These are among the miniature, themed pianos Cantrell has crafted that are on display this month at the Post Memorial Art Reference Library, housed in the Joplin Public Library at 300 S. Main St.
It’s a hobby that evolved from her business of making shipping containers and from a suggestion by her husband, Larry Cantrell, a business unit manager at LaBarge. He suggested one day that she make some pianos as a hobby. She did, learning the craft of woodworking as she went along and turning out fanciful, musical cabinets from her imagination.
“That’s part of what makes it fun,” she said of the learning process. She’s made 10 since she started two years ago, and she has three in the works now.
Several of her toy pianos are Victorian-styled, with curlicue trim and tiny benches or piano seats that resemble those from that bygone era. They’re too small for a full 88-key keyboard, equipped instead with two-octave or four-octave keyboards.
But some cabinets don’t look like pianos at all, like the car Cantrell made for her grandfather, or one that looks like a sailing ship with a mermaid figurehead and a seat that looks like a giant octopus reaching out of the ocean with red tentacles. The mermaid figurine was the inspiration; she found it at a rummage sale.
Another whimsically themed piano is the “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” which came from her love of the Halloween holiday.
“I’ve always made things,” said Cantrell. She said she has always found alternative applications for everyday items, like turning baby food flakes into snow.
“I’ve always looked at things and thought they looked like other things,” she said.
She also is expressing her creativity by building and painting funhouse mirrors, like the elaborately decorated ones once visited at carnivals.
Her studio is a simple tin building in her backyard, where she has a wood stove for heat, “and in the summer, I just sweat,” she said. That doesn’t bother her a bit.
“My shop is as important as my home to me. I do other things, but this is what I live,” Cantrell said of her craft work.
Leslie Simpson, director of the art library, said Cantrell’s collections will be on display at least through the end of February and perhaps through March if it can be arranged.
Library hours
The Post Memorial Art Reference Library is open from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday and Thursday; from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; and from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
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