CHARLES ROBERT ASHBEE (1863-1942, DESIGNER) AND THE GUILD OF HANDICRAFT (CASE MAKER) FOR J. STROHMENGER & SONS, LONDON
ARTS & CRAFTS WALNUT, BIRCH AND INLAID UPRIGHT PIANO, CIRCA 1907
£7,500
Auction: 10 October 2018 at 11:00 BST
Description
with overstrung iron frame, no. 10275, the whole with chequer and chevron banded decoration, the double hinged lid above hinged panel doors each inlaid with opposed lozenges, marquetry-inlaid with leaf sprigs, and set with brass hinges with corresponding opposed cast decoration, the interior with panelled back and keyboard of seven octaves, music stand and pair of adonised copper hanged candle sconces, the whole raised on square supports
148.5cm wide, 132cm high, 67cm deep
Footnote
Provenance: Paul Reeves, London
Literature: Crawford, Alan, ‘C.R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist’, Yale 1985, pp. 287-292;
‘Innen-Dekoration’, Volume Fourteen, 1903 and ‘The Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art’, 1906, where a very similar piano, made for J. Broadwood & Sons is illustrated.
Crombie, David, 'A Photographic History of the World's Most Celebrated Instrument,' Miller Freeman Books 1995, p. 67 where it is thought that this piano is illustrated.
Note: Ashbee's deliberately unconventional furniture designs after 1900 particularly focused on his designs for pianos. Both his wife and his mother were talented pianists and besides, 'artists and architects of advanced tastes had been interested in reforming the design of piano cases for some time'. Burne-Jones, with W.A.S. Benson, had produced a design in 1879 which replaced the deep curves and massive legs of the high Victorian era with a treatment closer to late 18th century harpsichords and these 'Reformed' or 'Artistic' forms provoked 'steady interest' from then onwards. Ashbee's first design was for his wife Janet in 1900 and was 'shocking' in its subversion of convention. The design of this upright piano takes as its origins the ‘Manxman’ piano designed by Baillie Scott exhibited at the Arts and Crafts exhibition of 1896. Scott didn’t favour a projecting keyboard and so enclosed it with a cupboard, with ‘boldly hinged doors’, getting the idea from an Elizabethan strongbox. This design appealed to Ashbee’s interest in the unconventional and a series of inlaid cases were designed by him and made by the Guild of Handicraft for firms like Broadwood and Strohmenger who specialised in ‘specials’. The current sophisticated and luxurious design for Strohmenger & Sons has the lozenge as its central decorative device, is inlaid with panels of leaves (also painted on the iron frame), and with hinges cast with flowering plants, all familiar motifs. A similar example of a piano by Ashbee of this form is held by the National Trust at Standen House.
Restored in 1999, and in fully working order.