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Lot Essay
The number 16974 indicates a date of manufacture by Kirkman between 1867-70 as the numbers recorded during this period are 16340-19670, Pierce Piano Atlas, 9th edition, p.164.
Messrs Kirkman & Sons were exhibitors at the London 1885 International Inventions Exhibition, and the case was supplied by Messrs Howard & Sons of Berners Street, who were amongst the greatest London cabinet-makers of the period and were contributors to both the Paris Universal Exhibitions of 1878 and 1900.
Publications on Renaissance ornament in the 1870s promoted the fashion for 'certosa' style ivory-inlay as featured in G.J.Oakshott's, Details and Ornaments of the Renaissance, 1888. This piano,with Grecian-lyre pedal-support, is inlaid in evocation of lyric poetry with foliated scrolls inhabited by birds drinking from fountains or guarding shell-decked cartouches with dolphins. Stephen Webb, a member of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, was perhaps the most celebrated designer of this intarsia or certosa inlay, and was employed from the mid 1880s by Messrs Collinson and Lock of Fleet Street and Oxford Street.
Messrs Kirkman & Sons were exhibitors at the London 1885 International Inventions Exhibition, and the case was supplied by Messrs Howard & Sons of Berners Street, who were amongst the greatest London cabinet-makers of the period and were contributors to both the Paris Universal Exhibitions of 1878 and 1900.
Publications on Renaissance ornament in the 1870s promoted the fashion for 'certosa' style ivory-inlay as featured in G.J.Oakshott's, Details and Ornaments of the Renaissance, 1888. This piano,with Grecian-lyre pedal-support, is inlaid in evocation of lyric poetry with foliated scrolls inhabited by birds drinking from fountains or guarding shell-decked cartouches with dolphins. Stephen Webb, a member of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, was perhaps the most celebrated designer of this intarsia or certosa inlay, and was employed from the mid 1880s by Messrs Collinson and Lock of Fleet Street and Oxford Street.