H ouse and Garden 
It will go hard if you or your architect have not 
sufficient memory of color harmonies to pick some 
piano which completes in a higher or lower key the 
color scheme of your room. 
At the exhibition rooms of the fEolian Com¬ 
pany in New York are shown four splendid 
grands, three of which are here included. On the 
main floor, a Louis Quinze piano greets one, such 
as might have been the gift of a fellow-potentate to 
that king, had such instruments existed in his reign. 
It is treated in dull gold throughout. Carvings 
nearly in the round include sportive figures of 
nymphs, half-draped, which decorate the front to 
right and left of the keyboard, broadly carved 
figures with draperies in well-studied folds, the little 
faces peeping from under lowered brows. 
This piano has very agreeable proportions; the 
legs are graceful in line, neither too heavy nor too 
slight for the bulky box they must support. 1 he 
long sides, with their graceful traceries in relief, 
seem to call for delicate paintings, which would have 
a capital background in the dull gold. Very often, 
however, decorated pianos have too much in the way 
of paintings on them, figures and scenes too learned 
and labored. Here the problem would be for some 
artist of infinite taste, like Whistler, to enliven the 
sides with “harmonies” in one or two colors. But 
if that sort of artist were not to he had, the object as 
it stands is far better without further embellishment, 
since the more beautiful and complete a thing is, the 
greater the danger that another touch spoil all. 
The instrument costs as many thousands as an 
ordinary piano costs hundreds. 
On one of the upper floors stands a Louis 
Ouatorze grand, with dull and burnished gold clev¬ 
erly contrasted. Its shape and decoration belong 
with the heavier architectural style of the older 
reign. The pedal is shaped like a solid lyre, 
the music-rack is like a screen such as one sees 
in architecture. The massive effect of all this 
woodwork is strongly in contrast with the airier 
grace of the Louis Quinze instrument just described. 
Such objects of art belong to certain interiors. Or, 
if one should acquire such an object, then it might 
be a delightful occupation to make it serve as the 
centre-piece round which gradually to accumulate 
the tapestries, paintings, clocks and furniture which 
belong to the epoch so bravely set forth in the 
fictions of Alexander Dumas, an epoch which has 
been exploited of late by the historical romances 
so popular to-day, notwithstanding the almost 
crushing superiority of Dumas. 
Here, too, is a Louis Seize piano in the natural 
color of Circassian walnut, a beautiful wood from the 
Black Sea, whose markings throw the fantastic lines 
of art nouveau into the shade. The decoration is 
more discreet and reserved than that on the Louis 
Ouinze instrument. Carvings in high relief are 
eschewed. The cover is treated with a leaf-ribbon 
ornament incised and gilt. The music-rack is solid 
and similarly treated, while the legs have small 
garlands in low relief with gilding prudently ad¬ 
ministered to avoid all suggestion of sumptuousness 
or the baroque. At the sides of the keyboard and at 
the end of the case are classic profile medallion heads 
carved in the walnut, set about with delicate carv¬ 
ings, gilded. All is refined in comparison with the 
preceding styles and that of the Empire of later date. 
One sees the result of studies by artist-artisans of 
the objects collected in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs 
at Paris, for although these “art pianos” were made 
in New York, none the less must their makers have 
had before them such examples of decorative art as 
one can only find in Paris. It is to supply such 
models here that the new administration of the 
Metropolitan Museum of Art has set to work under 
the directorship of Sir Purdon Clarke and Dr. 
Edward Robinson. 
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