74 Lyon & Turnbull
Ashbee’s deliberately unconventional furniture designs after 1900 particularly focussed 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 Strohmendger 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. The piano was restored in 1999, and is in full working order. Other fees apply in addition to the hammer price, please see the ‘Buyer’s Guide’ section on page 6