Pre-iPod – This Is How The Victorians Did Music Storage
I believe they are known as Millenials, those born just before or after the end of the twentieth century who have never know life without digital technology, smartphones, Facebook, the Internet and all that those technology breakthroughs have done to enrich our lives.
Today we are able to store vast quantities of information on a device smaller than your thumbnail, but it wasn’t always so.
Our parents, grandparents and those who went before would have used bulkier and less convenient methods to store their information; bookshelves, record racks and even those miracles of space saving technology, cassette cases and CD racks, represented huge strides forward in music storage technology.
In the days when a piano was regarded as a very desirable thing to have, and when taking piano lessons was, for many, obligatory, the delivery method for the music itself came in the form of sheet music. You would go to a music shop and buy the sheet music for that new song that everyone was talking about, and learn to play it.
This, coupled with the obligatory collection of classical sheet music that most music sturdents would find difficult to avoid, meant that there was a need to store this relatively expensive paperwork somewhere safe. Commerce and industry did then, as it does now, and created a storage system for it and we are pleased to be able to bring you this recently acquired Antique Victorian burr walnut and satinwood line inlaid music cabinet, circa 1880 in date:
Antique Victorian Walnut Sheet Music Cabinet dating from around 1880
The cabinet is fitted with a glazed door which is beautifully decorated with the original floral silk embroidery that has been well preserved by the glass. Inside there are four shelves for storing your sheet music. The cabinet is flanked by turned and carved fluted Corinthian columns.
Each shelf has the original gold tooled leather label for different types of sheet music on the front. The labels read: Songs, Sacred, Gen music, and Dance.
The cabinet is 102cm high by 62cm wide and 40cm deep. If you prefer inches, which I do and the craftsman who made this would have no concept of anthing else, the measurements are 3 feet, 4 inches high x 2 feet wide 1 foot, 4 inches deep.
There is a decorative brass gallery on top and it stands on it’s original porcelain and brass castors.
This lovely cabinet is also supplied with a working lock and key. For more photographs please follow this link.
We are able to ship this cabinet worldwide, please call us for a quotation or, if you have any questions please call +44 20 8809 9605 or email: info@regentantiques.com. There is much more to admire on our website or at our north London showroom.