Domenico asked about the date of the original Hemsch. It is believed to be 1736, but the third digit had been altered to read ‘0’ at some stage.
A truly gorgeous harpsichord.
For some very curious reason the MFA Collections link above for the Hemsch now returns a server error. Odd. I’ll contact the administrator to find out why.
I just tried the link and it worked fine. Perhaps because I’m in BAWS’tn and a paid-up member of the MFA? Boston can be terribly provincial…
-Nick
The link seems fine again now.
I have two questions. In the above view with the keyboard out, what are these incredibly crude holes? Do they go right through? Is this for some pedal pulldowns? But the spacing is all over the place. Gigantic borer worms?
Also, do we know who did the restoration of this instrument? I recall reading somewhere that the ribbing was changed and not original.
The monochrome photo of the bottom suggests that the holes do not go through. Perhaps a repurposed wrest plank? There appears in this photo to be a history of a lot of physical revision of the soundboard(s), ribbing and hitch pin rails.