Guild of Handicraft piano designed by Charles Robert Ashbee, £16,000 at Sworders.
The upright Broadwood piano designed by Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942), a piece sent for exhibition in Hungary in 1902, had been estimated at £6000-8000 as part of the January 16 Design sale in Stansted Mountfitchet.
Fashioned in Spanish mahogany inlaid with holly and applied with pierced strap hinges, this is one of at least five Broadwood pianos made with Ashbee casings by the Guild of Handicraft. Examples are pictured in all of the major texts on Arts and Crafts furniture.
Detail of a Guild of Handicraft piano designed by Charles Robert Ashbee, £16,000 at Sworders.
This particular piano (numbered 95406, model 8) has an impeccable provenance.
The Broadwood Archives list the date of manufacture (it was finished on February 27, 1902), the price paid by one Mr C Watson Low (£118.2.6) and its part in the British Applied Arts Exhibition at the National Museum of Decorative Art in Budapest in September-November 1902. It was sent to Hungary along with another Arts and Crafts piano designed by Hugh Mackay Baillie Scott.
Watson Low later gave his Ashbee piano and its stool to his niece, Miss CM Low, who used it to teach piano until retirement in 2001. Her grandson offered it for sale. He contacted Sworders after he found a near identical piano sold by the auction house in 2014 for £10,400.
An extract from the Broadwood Archives dated May, 14, 1902 records the shipping of the Ashbee piano to the British Applied Arts Exhibition at the National Museum of Decorative Art in Budapest.
