Steinway & Sons Reproducing Grand Piano: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This reproducing grand piano was made by Steinway & Sons in New York in 1930. This model “AR” grand has a Duo-Art reproducing mechanism in a remote concertola cabinet. This cabinet holds multiple player rolls in a location away from the piano, and allows these rolls to be played consecutively and automatically. The piano is serial number 271205(?), and has a compass of AAA-c5, repetition action, felt hammers, 1, 2, or 3 steel strings per note, 3 pedals: una corda, sostenuto and dampers, a one-piece iron frame, cross-strung, and an English oak case, ornately carved with spirally-twisted carved legs, and no curved sides.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date made: 1930
• maker: Steinway & Sons
• Object Name: piano
• Physical Description: wood (overall material)
• Physical Description: metal (overall material)
• Place Made: United States: New York, New York City
• ID Number: 1983.0587.01
• catalog number: 1983.0587.01
• accession number: 1983.0587
• Credit Line: Gift of Dean E. Burget, Jr., M.D. and Undine Ehrman Burget
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.