Furniture of the Olden Time

by Frances Clary Morse

Thus the lady for whom all this was designed, after using it as a dressing-table, could play the piano and look at her own pretty face in the mirror while she played and sang. This combination of piano, dressing-table, and writing-desk is owned by the Rev. James H. Darlington, D.D., of Brooklyn, New York.

In 1829 the manufacture of pianofortes had increased so that during that year twenty-five hundred pianos were made in the United States, chiefly in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.

The piano in Illustration [289] belongs to Mrs. Ada Grisier of Auburn, Indiana, and is an unusually fine specimen of the six-legged piano fashionable about 1830. The case is of mahogany and is inlaid with lines of brass, while around the body run two rows, of different width, of brass moulding. The legs are large, and elaborately carved, and are set in brass standards. On each corner of the frame is a design in gilt. There is one wooden pedal, and the range of the piano is five and one-half octaves. The name of the maker has been obliterated.

The piano in Illustration [290] is owned by Mrs. Louis M. Priest of Salem, New York. The body is of rosewood inlaid with brass, the lid being of mahogany, like the elaborately carved trestle-shaped supports. It has two drawers for holding music, and one pedal, the standard for which is a carved lyre with a mirror behind its strings. The keyboard has a range of six octaves. The name upon the front is Peter Erben, 103 Pump St., New York. Peter Erben was a music-teacher whose address from 1826 to 1827 was 103 Pump Street, which determines the date of this piano. The writer knows of four pianos with the carved mahogany trestle-supports, all with the name of Peter Erben as maker, though it is probable that, like modern pianos, the works were bought, and whoever wished might have his name upon the name-plate, since Peter Erben is in the New York directories for thirty years as “Musick teacher” or “Professor of musick” only.

Illus. 291.—Piano-stool,
1820-1830.

The piano-stool in Illustration [291] was made to use with the piano in Illustration [290]. The wide spread to the three feet gives the effect of a table base, but there is no doubt that this was made originally to use for a piano-stool. The little weather-beaten house, in which the piano and stool had always stood, possesses a ghost story of a young girl who was starved to death by her miser brother, and who was said to haunt the house. This piano and stool give the impression of the reverse of a miser, and the poor ghost must have been before their day. The stool is now owned by the writer, but is neither practical nor comfortable, the feet being much in the way.

Illustration [292] shows a piano of most elaborate design, made about 1826. There is no maker’s name upon the piano. The frame is of mahogany and has a brass moulding around the body, and brass rosette handles to the drawers. Around each square carved panel upon the front legs is a brass beading, and the lions’ claws on the front legs and the sockets upon the back legs are of brass.