Following our February display of ‘Dance Band Leaders’ we show another series of 25 cigarette cards also published in 1929 by Lambert & Butler.

These instruments are reproduced from the drawings by William Gibb (1839–1929) to illustrate A. J. Hipkins’s Musical Instruments Historic, Rare and Unique published in Edinburgh in 1888. There were further editions of this book in 1921 and 1945.

The ‘Empress Harpsichord’ shown in the first row below was so called after the Empress Maria Theresa for whom it was made in 1773 by Shudi and Broadwood. It features a Venetian swell patented by Burkat Shudi in 1769.