Skip to main content

Egyptian Revival

 

On a visit today I was taken by an Egyptian revival style piano.




I have amongst my books a Taschen Description de l’Egypt. Being Taschen it is of course just the illustrations rather than the full contents including original nine volumes of text. See Description de l'Égypte - Wikipedia. Still a delight albeit at reduced size. It was of course the eventual output of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, accompanied by his savants, to explore, map and transform Egypt with French enlightenment.

 



Today I was at the Waiheke Musical Museum on Waiheke Island, the museum sometimes known after its founders as the Whittaker Museum. A great living history show by the now proprietors talking and playing on the many historic keyboard instruments there. One particularly took my fancy – an Egyptian Revival piano, pictured above. Here is their page on the instrument: Upright Piano – Egyptian - Waiheke Musical Museum.

The performer on the piano said it was a rather ordinary instrument musically. It had been restored recently by a craftsman on the island.

You can see more of the collection here: The Instruments - Waiheke Musical Museum

It’s from the second period of Egyptian revival in the later 19th century. This is a neat essay about the revival styes from The Met: Egyptian Revival | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (metmuseum.org)

The Taschen volume in its 1000 odd pages has many illustrations of columns like those of the piano. See the cover above and this:





I did not spot the exact original for the piano – but the Description was a source of Egyptian revival design elements for many years.

A nice surprise to see a derived output of Napoleon’s savants being treasured.

 

Look back to 2008 in this blog. I have visited the subject before.

 

Popular posts from this blog

  Part Two -Getting involved in Archaeology as an Interest.   Part One looked at archaeology as a profession to get into, this looks at other aspects for people with other ambitions.   The early 19 th C origins of archaeology were from a time when there were no archaeologists – the people that pioneered it were often trained in other fields and many of them were employed in other fields. Now the field seems to be dominated by professionals, with a long path of training and experience needed to become one (See Part One).   Is there now no role for those with an interest in archaeology?   There is.   An Invitation to Archaeology:   “We are all archaeologists now.” ( The Archaeological Imagination . Michael Shanks)   If we have an interest in archaeology, it is because we have been exposed to archaeology in some form. Through that exposure we can start to see that the hand of past people is still with us in the physical world, that forgotten aspects of their exist
Read more
  People were asking - how does one go about getting to be an archaeologist – or at least involved in archaeology? Let’s deal with being an archaeologist working or being employed as such.   Part One - The Professional Professional archaeologists in New Zealand generally follow these pathways: ·          University (research and teaching-based) archaeologists. ·          Heritage or Cultural Resource Management archaeologists. ·          Museum (curatorial) archaeologists. University-based Archaeologists These are primarily academic or technical roles based in tertiary institutions. Most are involved in teaching as well as research. This involves archaeological excavations, laboratory work. The number of roles is limited in New Zealand. Heritage or Cultural Resource Management archaeologists . Most archaeologists employed in New Zealand area in the heritage management field. These include: ·          Private consultants. Principals of such firms are full time jo
Read more
  Quotes for Archaeologists I used to have these in the page formatting of this blog - but it didn't work on iPhones and the ilk so took it down. Here they are as a post instead.
Read more