An 1897, Arts and Crafts style, Bechstein upright piano with a mahogany case, fretwork panels and ornate brass hinges in a stylised floral design The front panel features cupboard doors, which open so as to allow the music desk to fall into place. The music desk is in an openwork folkloric inspired design of stylised birds, foliage and flowers. Piano has an eighty-eight note keyboard and two pedals.

Arts and Crafts

The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiated in reaction against the perceived impoverishment of the decorative arts and the conditions in which they were produced, the movement flourished in Europe and North America between about 1880 and 1920. It is the root of the Modern Style, the British expression of what later came to be called the Art Nouveau movement, which it strongly influenced. The term was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887, although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least 20 years. It was inspired by the ideas of architect Augustus Pugin, writer John Ruskin, and designer William Morris. In Scotland it is associated with key figures such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Visually, the style has much in common with its contemporary art nouveau and it played a role in the founding of Bauhaus and modernism. Arts and Crafts decorative style was based on the following principles; handmade, simple forms with little ornamentation, beauty of natural materials, copper and pewter, stylised flowers, allegories from the Bible and literature, upside down hearts, Celtic motifs. Source: Wikipeda