Harp-guitar, Clementi & Co., English (London), 1825-30.

'Rounded body of three pieces, with an open slot in the centre piece, and closed at the bottom by a deep curved plate, the whole stained brown and bordered with rows of simulated pearl ornament. Belly painted cream-colour bordered with flowers, with a fretted rose and a fixed bridge. The neck is thinned at the back down the bass side. The slightly curved black-painted fingerboard has twelve ivory frets and a shaped flat head with ten rear pegs. The instrument is, however, strung with eight single strings of gut, the two centre pegs being functionless' - Anthony Baines: Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments (London, 1998), pp. 66-67.

This instrument was bought by the museum in 1882 for £3. It had been part of the collections of Carl Engel (1818-1882), an eminent musicologist from Hanover, who published the Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical Instruments in the South Kensington Museum in 1874. The South Kensington Museum has been known as the Victoria & Albert Museum since 1899.

Guitars and their variants were highly fashionable in England from about 1810 until about 1840. This was largely owing to the enthusiasm of Princess Charlotte (1796-1817), daughter of the Prince Regent, for such instruments. This example has eight strings and was probably played much like a Spanish guitar, but with two extra strings in the bass. It was made by Clementi & Co, a firm founded by Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) who came from Rome and settled in London in the early 1790s, where he set up a highly successful music-publishing and instrument-making business.

243-1882