Cathal Gannon (1 August 1910 – 23 May 1999), was an Irish harpsichord maker, a fortepiano restorer and an amateur horologist. Beginnings and education Gannon was born in Dublin, Ireland, into a craftsmen family of carpenters, many of whom worked in the famous Guinness Brewery. His education, in two local schools, was rudimentary and at the age of fifteen he started working as an apprentice carpenter in the Brewery. His apprenticeship involved learning to make office furniture and attending evening classes in nearby colleges, where he was able to improve his education in a more congenial atmosphere. A love of music and the arts had been encouraged by two maiden aunts – his parents subsequently bought an upright piano and he learned to play it at the Read Pianoforte School – and consequently, when his apprenticeship was completed and he was on the dole for some years, he spent much of his spare time buying pictures, books, antiques and old clocks and watches in the various auction rooms and antique shops in Dublin Societies and acquaintances During the mid-1930s, Gannon became a member of several Dublin-based societies, most notably the Old Dublin Society, and there befriended well-known people such as Grace Plunkett (née Gifford), the widow of Joseph Mary Plunkett (who had been executed after the Easter Rising of 1916). At around this time, Cathal was also introduced to Carl Hardebeck, an arranger of Irish traditional music. At a later stage in Cathal's life, he met Desmond Guinness and his wife Mariga, founders of the Irish Georgian Society, which he subsequently joined. Harpsichords While reading a series of articles about Tibet in a magazine, Gannon stumbled across an article, which, he believed, was by Violet Gordon Woodhouse, a British harpsichordist and clavichord player of the period. The article was about the revival of the harpsichord, which interested young Gannon. He asked permission to examine the harpsichords on display in the National Museum, Dublin, but was given no encouragement by the staff. He was finally allowed to see the instruments when he was in his early twenties. Dismayed, he concluded that they were too expensive to buy and too complicated to make. Whilst on holidays in Glengarriff in the West of Ireland during August 1936, Gannon met his future wife, Margaret Key from Harrow in London; they married in 1942. In London with Margaret, who was visiting her parents, Gannon went