Salon concert grand (“art case piano”)

Grotrian, Helfferich, Schulz / Th. Steinweg Nachf.
Braunschweig
1898
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, inv. no. 1986.97 

Musical instruments were sometimes richly decorated in the past. Paintings, carvings, precious stones and inlays made from fine woods offered aesthetic pleasure and reflected the status of the owners. Fortepianos were also lavishly decorated with the help of fine artists. Steinway & Sons, Bösendorfer and Grotrian-Steinweg all supplied so-called “art pianos” to wealthy clients

The Grotrian-Steinweg salon concert grand piano was built in Braunschweig in 1897/98. Technically speaking, it is a common grand piano with cast frame, cross-stringing, star notch and repetition mechanism. The decorative painter Johann Matthäus Keuffel, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1841, designed the instrument in the historicist style. The case stands on three legs carved from a single block and decorated with rocaille cartouches and acanthus foliage. Originally, the carvings were covered with silver and gold leaf. On the top of the lid is a female figure holding a David's harp: the personification of “harmony”. The inside of the lid shows an idyllic landscape. The female figure sitting on a boulder by a forest lake and playing the lyre could be an “Undine” - a virgin water spirit with an enchanting song. 

Nothing is known about who commissioned the “art piano”. Inside, there is the handwritten note ‘Kaiserhof’. As Keuffel worked as a decorative painter at the Imperial Palace in Strasbourg (Le Palais du Rhin) from 1883 to 1889, this could be the original location of the instrument. However, “Kaiserhof” is also a common name for noble hotels with a prominent clientele. Various possibilities are therefore conceivable.