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THE
REVIEW
VOL. LXXXII. No. 3 Piblished Every Satirday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 383 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. Jan. 16,1926
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Pianos Shown at the Paris Exposition
of the Decorative Arts
French Manufacturers United With Leading French Decorators and Furniture Designers to Exhibit Many
Instruments Which Showed Wide Departures From the Traditional Form of the Grand Piano
Case—Rosewood Leading in Popularity, Judging by the Instruments Exhibited
NE of the outstanding features in the re-
cent Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts
was the large number of exhibits of
French piano manufacturers of specially de-
signed instruments, most of them the work of
leading French furniture designers and interior
decorators. Many of the cases appeared radical
in design and conception to American observers,
habituated as the latter are to the American
type of case which departs no more from ac-
cepted design than in its adaptation to accepted
period styles, and that a movement which has
O
direction the French industry has produced ex-
cellent instruments. But as the first quality
of a piano is to be a very good instrument, it has
become a habit among certain people during the
past few years to consider it as a piece of pre-
cision machinery, of which the exterior lines,
uniquely dominated by construction or usage,
are similar to such mechanical designs as the
safe, the motorboat or the automobile.
"This thesis can be sustained, and a great con-
cert grand, with its simple and clear form, its
massive and solid legs, with a dark varnish and
They are furniture sober in line and decoration
and of a very careful workmanship. There
is no doubt that these ideas could not be im-
mediately applied to -ordinary pianos but they
are at least the proof that the construction, the
form and the decoration of the piano case are
not so perfect that they can not be improved."
In the instruments exhibited the designers of
the cases made many attempts to change the
traditional form of the grand. While some re-
tained the classic silhouette of the harp, others
produced rectangular instruments, and others
Four Gaveau Pianos Which Were Shown at the Decorative Arts
Exposition in Paris and Which Are Typical of the Radical Departure
From the Traditional Forms
only come into the American industry widely
during the past few years. French manufac-
turers, however, if they are to be judged by
their exhibits at the exposition, have gone much
further than this in an attempt to create case
designs that, despite the limitations set by the
acoustical requirements of the instruments,
would give new styles radically different from
those to which the trade and public have been
accustomed by long habitude.
Their aims perhaps are best expressed in a
review of the piano exhibits by Andre Frechet in
"Musique et Instruments."
"To judge a piano," he writes, "it is necessary
to consider it as a musical instrument and as a
luxurious piece of furniture customarily given
the place of honor in the room which re-
ceives it.
"A quality instrument must have a proper
mechanism. Its tone has breadth, volume, flexi-
bility and variety. These qualities, due to scien-
tific and careful construction, can not be ob-
tained save by the continual collaboration of
manufacturers, engineers and musicians. In this
almost a metallic lustre, is a mathematical and
frank solution of the problems posed. How-
ever, this solution has not yet been adopted by
all manufacturers, as for the greater number of
purchasers a piano should naturally be an ex-
cellent instrument, but it must also be a piece
of artistic furniture which has an essential part
in the furnishing and decoration of a room.
"The Exposition of Decorative Arts, the prep-
aration for which created among all artistic
industries such rivalry, gave to the piano in-
dustry an opportunity for the study and design
of piano cases which were simultaneously re-
markable instruments and beautiful modern
furniture. As the manufacturers and engineers
rightly draw inspiration from the advice of
musicians constantly to perfect the piano mech-
anism so did the manufacturers think to as-
sociate with them in their production decorators
and furniture designers in order to create new
styles. The pianos which have resulted from
this collaboration have in general the charac-
teristics of the greater part of the good furni-
ture which was exhibited at the Exposition.
instruments of which the two wides are straight
with a simple curve to connect them. Many
instruments were shown that had four, five or
six legs, distributing them in a fashion so that
the masses of the case would appear differently
from what is the ordinary course of design.
Only in three of the instruments exhibited was
the traditional lyre departed from as a support
for the pedals, though in its retention in many
instruments it went through considerable modi-
fication. The fall boards gave the designers
considerable scope to show their ingenuity and
naturally it was taken full advantage of.
The same author, in speaking of the woods
used in the cases, has the following to say:
"Macassar ebony wood, which had been the
vogue in the salons of modern decorative art
of 1922 to 1925, has not entirely lost favor. It
is a very beautiful wood. The play of black
veins, cut by light ochre lineaments, takes on an
extraordinary richness under polish. That is to
say, macassar can only be used with success in
amply thick veneers, and by concerns in which
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