Joachim Ehlers Empire Piano

Joachim Ehlers Empire Piano, Vienna, c. 1815, comprised of spruce, walnut, alder, and limewood, seventy-three notes, milk glass plaque on the nameboard flanked by a gilt-bronze border of foliate scrolls and festoons with putti, gilt-bronze candelabrum ornaments surrounding keyboard with ebonized figural masks atop each tapered columnar leg, terminating in gilded stepped foot, maker's name inscribed on the nameboard, lg. 86, wd. 45 in. Provenance: Sold by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for the benefit of the collections. The Edwin M. Ripin Collection. Gift of Leo L. and Phyllis K. Beranek, 1977.162. E. M. Ripin acquired the instrument in 1967 from Stoddard Lincoln, a New Yorker who had purchased the piano from the Bourbon Street Antique Shop at the 1964 New York World's Fair.